[Ken] Burns' new series focuses on WWII [New epic documentary in the works]

Two troubling statistics fueled the creation of "The War," the 14-hour documentary about World War II from acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns.

Burns thought he was done with war movies after his series, "The Civil War." But he changed his mind after realizing that America was losing its grip on the facts of World War II.

"It was really a couple of statistics that got me," Burns said. "One was that we're losing a thousand (World War II) veterans a day, and the other is that our children just don't know what's going on."

Burns said he was astonished at the number of high school graduates who were not certain who the United States fought in World War II.

"That to me was terrifying, just stupefying," said Burns, who will show the first two-hour installment of The War to Dartmouth College on Dec. 1.

The series follows four American communities -- Waterbury, Conn., Mobile, Ala., Sacramento, Calif., and Luverne, Minn. -- through the war years, focusing both on the soldiers from the towns sent to war and the families and friends left behind. Burns and his team interviewed 40 people who fought in the war or lived through it, and actors ranging from Tom Hanks to a 13-year-old Walpole girl read journals or newspaper articles about another half-dozen others. Home movies are interspersed with official archives of war footage.

"What it allows the film to be is experiential," Burns said. "It's not that our narrator doesn't talk about strategy or tactics, but you're not distracted by celebrities. It's not about Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin and Hitler. It's not about Eisenhower and Rommel. These people are names that pass before us in this film, they're not insignificant. But the point of view is from ordinary people, who do the fighting and who do the dying in all wars."

The film also moves away from Burns' signature style -- panning a camera across or focusing on a detail in an old photograph to give the viewer a sense of movement, while an actor reads from a speech or a journal over period music. But viewers still can expect the sort of painstaking attention to detail that has become a hallmark of Burns' work. It took a year to edit the sound to make the battle scenes as lifelike as possible, Burns said.

Work on "The War" started six years ago, before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Asked about the contrast between today's home front and World War II, Burns called the latter, "the greatest collective effort in the history of our country."

"We now have a military class in this country that suffers apart and alone, whereas there wasn't a family on any street in America that wasn't in some way touched by the war," he said.

"When 9/11 happened what were you asked to do? Nothing. Go shopping. That's what we were told," Burns said. "Go shopping. It's ridiculous. Nobody said, 'This is a war born of oil, turn your thermostats down five degrees.'"

A Tribute to my Father and Hero who died in 2004.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, my Dad [Clarence] was eager to join the military as soon as he was old enough to do so. Clarence joined the Navy when he turned 18 in 1944 and served on the battleship USS Mississippi (BB 41) with 2,000 other men. With her twelve 14 inch guns Mississippi supported the Marine landings on the Island of Peleliu. She then assisted in the liberations of the Philippines, shelling the east coast of Leyte supporting the landings of General Macarthur’s troops.
On the night of October 24th the Army on Leyte passed the word that a powerful Japanese naval task force was approaching from the south, and with The U.S. main battle fleet and the carriers away in the opposite direction chasing a decoy, the soldiers knew the Japanese were about to spring a trap. They would be doomed if the Japanese ships opened up on them. They waited in the dark in stunned silence and quite desperation. But lying in wait for the Japanese were six of America’s oldest battleships including the Mississippi that waited at the mouth of the Surigao Strait. This line of old battleships accompanied by 7th Fleet destroyers and cruisers, opened fire with an enormous coordinated salvo at the approaching line of Japanese warships, immediately sinking the first of the two Japanese battleships they would sink that night, along with three destroyers and a heavy cruiser. Naval historians would later call this “The greatest Naval Battle in History”, but for the Army ashore who could see the ships burning in the night sky, they had no words to explain what they saw, for they knew their worst nightmare was stopped dead in it’s tracks by Admiral Oldendorf’s old battleships. The men ashore have eternal gratitude to those Sailors and to the 1,100 of them that died out there that night.
The Mississippi supported the landing forces in the Philippines until February, despite receiving heavy damage near her waterline from a kamikaze during the bombardment of Lingayen Gulf Luzon.
One of the more memorable moments for Dad came while supporting landing forces on Okinawa. Dad would often tell the story of how the Japanese stalled our offensive from their position in Shuri Castle, which the enemy claimed was indestructible, and our Marines were beginning to have doubts it could be taken. Clarence said. "We opened up with our 14 inch guns and with 56 direct hits destroyed the castle.” The Marines were finally able to capture the castle but only after the Navy laid waste of it.
Clarence recalls the ship remained off Okinawa for two months never shutting down it’s engines so they would always be ready for a fight and for the constant threat from the kamikazes. Even after being hit by a kamikaze once again, this time on her starboard 5 inch gun mounts, which caused heavy damage and many casualties the Mississippi refused to leave. The soldiers ashore were grateful that Ole Miss stayed on post even with her heavy damage. Her steadfast presence saved many lives on Okinawa.
After the announced surrender of Japan, the USS Mississippi anchored in Tokyo Bay while Clarence and his shipmates witnessed the signing of the surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri on September 2nd 1945.

The ship was sold for scrap in 1956, but the men to which she was so good haven’t forgotten her. It is recalled by us his children that the first word he taught us to spell was M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i., and there is no doubt why.

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