The Pacific: Reviewing Part Five

CROSSHAIRS - Opinions & Commentary ^ | 04-16-10 | Michael Tank

[MTank50]

But then just when you think that this series may have turned a corner and is now going to concentrate on what these brave men achieved, they have to show us another atrocity.

[OldMissileer]

I've been watching but just can't get into it like Band of Brothers.

They seem to be trying to make all the US Marines un-heroes.

[Tallguy]

I haven't read the diaries upon which The Pacific is based, but they are supposed to be the best such works around. Just goes to show you how a political agenda can screw up a historical work that had real potential.

[Northern Yankee]

Having my father serve in the Pacific, I have the best knowledge of it I could ever get.

I still hated the way Eastwood portrayed Americans as the villians in Letters From Iwo Jima. Hard for me to watch much of anything as of late about the Pacific.

I still prefer Victory At Sea.

[OldMissileer]

Having my father serve in the Pacific, I have the best knowledge of it I could ever get.

My Uncle (like a second father to me) piloted B-25s in the 5th Air Force over in the Pacific. I learned to think everyone who fought over there were heroes, and I don't use that term lightly.

I will not be buying the BlyRay discs of this series like I did with "Band..."

[rlmorel]

I don't watch television and don't have cable. But I have been looking forward to watching this...until I read this thread.

Are you telling me they are spending all their time concentrating on the brutality of the USMC?

Now, anyone who was there, or took the time to talk to them or read books like "The Old Breed at Peleliu", "Goodbye Darkness" and "Helmet for My Pillow" knows the war in the Pacific was different in a very brutal and fundamental way from the European theater. (Note that I do NOT in any way diminish or denigrate what happened in the European theater, but by all accounts, the fighting in the Pacific seems to have been far more primal, primitive, basic, brutal and without quarter on any front. I know brutalities and terrible conditions occurred in Europe as well, so I hope nobody takes this comment the wrong way)

I only recently had read "Helmet for My Pillow", and had no idea a good part of this series was based on it. I had read many of Robert Leckie's works, but for some reason, this one had eluded me.

When I read the passage about "Souveniers" in the book, there was something horribly different about the er...clinical and casual way he described the Marine by that nickname on Guadalcanal. I don't remember EXACTLY how he described it, but it was something like:

"...he kicked open their jaws with his foot, then peered into their mouths with the solicitude of a Park Avenue dentist, reaching in with his pliers and making sure he did not touch the dead body..."

In the dozens of books about the Pacific war I have read over the years, I had heard about "Souveniers" many times, but there was something just horrible in that description that affected me.

Not having seen the series, I can ask all of you: Did they they spend much time highlighting the activities of "Souveniers"? Because even though he existed and more than a few accounts have been written about him, I think it is a terrible disservice to our men if they dwelt on his actions and those like it (or only showed one side of this behavior-ours)to the exclusion of other facets of the warfare out there.

Please tell me it isn't so.

[denydenydeny]

In Band of Brothers you saw exactly why Easy was such a successful unit because of their tremendously high morale. In The Pacific the viewer is left puzzled as to how we won the war because you only see these Marines as burnt out and angst-ridden.

Also in BoB, when Buck Compton broke down and had to leave the unit, we understood exactly why, and your heart went out to him. In episode 4 of the Pacific, the one set in the hospital, I wanted General Patton to show up and start slapping people just to get the series moving again.

[Cyman]

Watched three episodes waiting for it to get better and then forgot to watch the last two. Guess that tells me what I think of the series.

[OldMissileer]

Yes, it was more brutal and they are portraying that, but the series is focusing on things other than the battles and the personal interactions within the battles.

One whole episode was about a unit on rest in Australia and seemed to want to show more female skin than about the men.

I know people didn't fight all the time, and that delving into other aspects of the war can broaden a good story, but I really can't see the point in how this series is being presented, other than they seem to be ashamed that Band of Brothers was so well received by even conservatives and it portrayed Easy Company in a favorable light. Thus, they need to insert a leftward bias to assuage their liberal egos.

[Northern Yankee]

I really liked Band of Brothers. Congratulations to your uncle. Everyone of my uncles, and friends of our families, who served in Europe and the Pacific will always be heroes to me as well.

My father flew B-29's out of Guam. He was literally on the last mission. Lost an engine coming back from Japan and had to make an emergency landing at Iwo Jima. He landed at Iwo and had to have his engine fixed. By the time he returned to Guam the war was over.

[NEMDF]

The father of Mr NEMDF was at Pelelieu. His father was never able to to talk about his war experiences. So we have found the series helpful just to better understand the times and events. You do have to keep on the “it is presented by liberals” filter while watching. Our sons, who all served in Iraq, have also been watching the series.

Semper Fi

[rlmorel]

Agh. I cannot express how disappointing that is to hear.

How could they get “Band Of Brothers” so seemingly right, and get this so seemingly wrong?

I admit, I have long been of the opinion that they might never be able to make a quality movie about the Pacific war, due to the unrelenting...brutality of it?

I could understand how they did it for Europe...they would have the troops walk through a small town that looked vaguely familiar...the civilians seemed like...people, they might see a cow walk by, and a guy who was a farmer before he enlisted might run up and put his arms around the neck of the cow and hug it.

But in the Pacific, how do you have two hours or ten hours about Peleliu? About Iwo Jima? About Tarawa?

There were no civilians (some natives) there were no quaint towns with cafes that you knew would open their doors again when the fighting ended. There was unceasing rain, blazing sun, all manner of biting and sucking insects and other strange and dangerous wildlife. There was no offering of cigarettes to the vanquished enemy, or being offered one yourself if you were vanquished. There were many veterans of the Pacific war who said they never once saw a live enemy soldier.

There was nothing anywhere in the European theater that even compared to something like Peleliu, where the temperatures approached 130 degrees with no shade, no holes to hide in, no place to bury human bodies or human waste, and the flies covered everything in a thick, black carpet and flew back and forth indiscriminately from your food to the bodies, to the shit, then back again. (I was amazed to hear about more than a few of the Marines who were called back up and had to endure the conditions at the Chosin Reservoir, were, in many cases, men who had survived Peleliu. To have had to experience, live and fight through a temperature range of -75 (with wind chill) to +130 is beyond me.)

I always wondered how on earth anyone would ever make a movie about those places. And it sounds like they fumbled in the trying.

[OldMissileer]

You are right. There was/is not much that Americans could or can relate to over there and the fighting was different than Europe. The Japanese soldiers were more brutal in many aspects and more fanatical, but having the Concentration Camps ranks the Nazis up there with the worst.

Even though glamorizing combat does not always do any one a great service there were some old movies that were pretty good but they focused on the fighting and the heroism of our men.

[Goldsborough]

As a fan of BoB, I see the first series for what it is compared to The Pacific, hero worship by Stephen Ambrose set against first hand memoirs by Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge, along with following Sgt. Basilone from Guadalcanal, to his bond tour, to his death on Iwo following a successful appeal to return to the fleet.

By the nature of its source material, The Pacific was bound to be far more grim and conflicted than BoB ever was. The war in the Pacific was psychologically different. Your only "set piece" battle was going to be the landing--sometimes. The rest of the fighting bore no resemblance to anything in Western Europe. Not even the fighting in hedgerow country or the house to house fighting in towns in France and Holland could compare to shooting, blasting, and flame throwering the Japanese--to the last man--out of their island fortifications. Nor did the Germans often fight to the very last man or launch insensibly suicidal attacks. The war in the Pacific was an alien affair of total annihilation in an alien landscape compared to the stand-up fights in Europe under familiar weather in a place not altogether unlike home.

While the producers of The Pacific can be called all manner of things, what they cannot yet be called is unfaithful to their source material. There was no heroic glow on the Pacific War, more like a pall of funeral smoke, even when it was being fought. Following Tarawa, folks wanted Nimitz court martialed. They had no idea what guys like Leckie, Basilone, and Sledge were enduring.

Helmet For My Pillow by Leckie, and With The Old Breed by Sledge, are deeply conflicted accounts about the "heroism" and "glory" of the fighting that they saw. Their war was against the ultimate stranger, the Japanese and their fanaticism, and more a exercise in there being no excess when it comes to self-preservation, than it was an honorable fight. The psychological pressure is reflected in Leckie's and Slegde's eyewitness accounts of suicides, and the barbarism that men descended to, a rather early echo of some of the same things that were documented in the country's next jungle war in Vietnam a generation later.

Therefore, if you want to blame the producers of The Pacific for its anti-heroic tone vis-a-vis Band of Brothers you'd best get to reading the source material and blame the Marines who fought these campaigns for not varnishing their experiences for you like Ambrose did for Easy Company.

That's the major difference in the two series, first hand memoirs written after the war, complicated by the authors not being in the same units, versus a historical ode to a small band of paratroopers written second hand by a professional historian using men in their twilight looking back.

[Lockbar]

I watched parts one, two, and four at a friends house. I am not very excited by this series. The story line is weak, and I don’t think the acting is very good. Its really missing something. Plus I hear the ratings are only one third that of “Band of Brothers”.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I didn't think “Letters” portrayed Americans as villains. The movie was more about the sh*tty deal the Japanese had at the end of the war; no resupply, no food and idiotic officers.

[rlmorel]

"...and seemed to want to show more female skin than about the men..."

Now, to be fair, in the reading of "Helmet for My Pillow", it is hard to imagine them talking about anything much else than female skin when discussing Australia, at least from Robert Leckie's experience...

I had to admit, that part when the ships pulled out to leave and there were thousands of inflated condoms floating in the wake, the "shrieks of faked indignation" that came from the women on the shore told a story all their own...:)

But I know exactly what you are saying.

[Jmouse007]

While they did not overtly highlight souvenir (gold teeth) hunting, it is presented several times throughout the series. And as unpleasant as it may seem to us as we watch from the comfort of our safe living rooms in 2010. The various men who detailed these historical accounts were there. They saw them take place and from all accounts it was fairly commonplace, not an excuse, just cold-hard reality. The fact of the matter is simply this: War in the Pacific was brutality personified with no quarter given. Unlike the war throughout Europe, the very environment itself proved an additional enemy. There were few cities, homes, businesses, churches etc... (bombed out or otherwise) where they could take comfort, familiarity or respite from the storm of war, only the unremitting heat, wet, muck and decaying vegetation of a jungle and islands teaming with dangerous “life”. It is a testament to the fortitude of the troops who served in these unrelenting and inhospitable conditions that they survived at all or did not lose their minds. On top of this, the Allied forces were battling a fanatical entrenched Japanese enemy that were bound body and soul to the Bushido code. Men who would rather die than surrender and would try to take as many of the enemy with them when they did so. It therefore comes as no surprise that after seeing comrades, medics and friends time and time again killed outright when they had only sought to treat the wounded and suffering Japanese that new unspoken rules of engagement would ensue resulting in some of the accounts of what subsequently took place. It is not a disservice to visually chronicle what did in fact take place because it is history.

One more thing, the series also faithfully highlights the brutality of the Japanese by presenting a scene of utter horror that was also well documented: Several American Marines had been captured alive, they were cut multiple times, limbs severed, bellies slashed and one poor soul had had his penis cut off and stuffed into his mouth. They were tied to a tree. The message was plain and simple: "This is what we will do to you Yankee dogs should we capture you alive."

[Northern Yankee]

Semper Fi as well.

God Bless your sons. Thank them for me for their service to our Country.

My nephew just returned from Iraq a few months ago. (Red Arrow Division) He's doing just fine.

[Northern Yankee]

That was true... but when they had the Americans shoot the Japanese straggler, after he befriended a wounded American soldier earlier, I couldn't watch it anymore.

Regards!