The Pacific (HBO)

[Mikey D]

Anyone else looking forward to The Pacific, the "sequel" to Band of Brothers?  Starts this Sunday.  I specifically subscribed to HBO just for this mini-series.  If it's half as good as BoB, we're in for a treat (I fully expect it to be just as good if not better).

[name]

It's on my "to watch" radar, and already programmed on the DVR in case I forget.  Can't wait.

[Matt_Fury]

I don't have HBO, but the DVD set will be worthy of a blind purchase.

[Jesse James]

Anyone catch the premiere of "The Pacific" tonight?  Pretty intense way to start the series.

[name]

thought so too....definitely has a different "feel" to than Band of Brothers did.  Have a feeling this is going to be told in flashbacks to their lives in the states, rather than sequentially.

[Morgbug]

Jesse I got those DVDs a few years ago.  Very, very good.  And I believe the DVDs have some additional footage that was deemed too graphic for the 60/70s. 

Interesting that television had a different standard than books.  Growing up I was very interested in WWII, building models and reading books on it voraciously.  The Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II series of books was predominantly what I would latch on to as they were relatively inexpensive and readily available.  The first dead body I ever saw in pictures was in the issue dealing with Tarawa. 

I would highly recommend that series of books to anyone and I'm trying to complete my collection of them.  There are something like 150 in the series (naturally as soon as I start buying something on Ebay the price increases until I lose interest).  They are not without flaws and the quality of the writing is variable depending upon the particular author.  What seems most notable to me is the relative lack of bias and anger in them.  They can be quite critical of both allied and axis actions from an analytical point of view.  They're typically only 160 or so pages each but most definitely not produced in the era of big print to make the books seem larger.  It's the smallest font I've come across in books in a very long time.

[Jesse James]

For those who caught the first episode (I got to watch it again tonight), anyone want to share thoughts?

The landing was interesting/funny almost because you had a tension built up because of going on that ride before...  Japanese landings were often different though, than compared to Normandy's D-Day. 

I thought the ending was also somewhat funny, but a little prophetic as well.  There was definitely more to that than the guys just joking around, coming from an outside observer's POV.  That made it kind of sad/scary in a way.

I thought the sequence with the distraught Japanese Soldier was poignant and powerful.  I thought it was shocking for a first episode.

This is definitely not Band of Brothers as I just got done telling others...  I think it'll be faster paced because it's the same number of episodes covering a longer period of actual time.  I also believe the series is going to focus less on the relationships of soldiers who serve throughout together, and more on a few who serve intermingled to some degree at various points, as well as focusing on the battles themselves and what it was like to be just a marine going through the time period from the start of service after Pearl Harbor to Okinawa.

It's an interesting series in its first episode alone, so I'm anxious to see episode 2.  I like to watch these a couple times because I inevitably miss things for some reason or another.

[name]

I was shocked by the single japanese soldier, penned down and toyed with, as well.  It seemed so early for the soldiers to already be that cool about shooting at a man...even an enemy.  I would have thought they would have captured him.  I suppose it's based on witness accounts, but it still just seemed a bit inhuman and unrealistic.

[Chris M]

Well, being that I don't have HBO, I'm sadly going to have to wait until the DVD comes out to catch this series.

[Mikey D]

I was shocked by the single japanese soldier, penned down and toyed with, as well.  It seemed so early for the soldiers to already be that cool about shooting at a man...even an enemy.  I would have thought they would have captured him.  I suppose it's based on witness accounts, but it still just seemed a bit inhuman and unrealistic.

The dying Japanese soldier did pull a grenade and blew up two of the US Soldiers that came to help him, so that maybe had something to do with the attitude of the soldiers toying with the Japanese soldier.

I'm not as well versed in WWII history as Jesse, Paul and others, but my general understanding is US Soldiers thought of the Japanese as less than human (and vice versa), unlike the European theater where even though the Germans were the enemy, German POWs were treated with as much respect as possible.  Hell even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the A-bombs, US planes were fire bombing Japanese cities and killing hundred of thousands of Japanese citizens.  Definitely not a high point in US military history.

I thought the first episode was great and am definitely looking forward to the rest.

[Morgbug]

I was shocked by the single japanese soldier, penned down and toyed with, as well.  It seemed so early for the soldiers to already be that cool about shooting at a man...even an enemy.  I would have thought they would have captured him.  I suppose it's based on witness accounts, but it still just seemed a bit inhuman and unrealistic.

Remember that many of the U.S. soldiers probably would have seen action in the Pacific theater already.  Didn't catch the show, so not sure which battle they are representing, but it is entirely possible that the soldiers involved had already witnessed or heard about atrocities the other way.  As Mikey says, not a proud moment in U.S. history perhaps but Japan's History is hardly glorious from a modern day humanitarian perspective.  War is a different world with different rules. 

[Paul]

It was Guadalcanal.

I think the "Perspective" is important as has been mentioned.

This was their first chance to get back at the Enemy who attacked Pearl Harbor.  The fighting they did during the night was impersonal and masked in darkness and muzzle flashes.  The Soldier in the river was their first chance to "return" fire face to face.  While they thought they were humiliting him, HE was dying with honor according to their code most likely.

No offense to the Greatest Generation, but these guys were MARINES...not Army or National Guard, even back then (especially back then) they were wired to kill right out of the gate.  Propaganda was used more then too.   It had pretty much de-humanized the enemy, especially in the South Pacific, even this early in the War.

Another thing to consider is that on the march in they did come accross the mutilated bodies of at least 2 other Marines.

It will be an intense series for sure.  I'd like to watch it with my Grandfather who was a WWII Marine.  I may DVR an episode or two and see what he thinks.

.

[Jesse James]

Yeah, this was pretty early in the war, and I believe they were intending to show it was the first taste of combat for most, if not all, of the characters that were focused on.  I believe GC's 6 months or so after Pearl Harbor.

The episode tried hard to show a lot of different perspectives I thought...  A soldier with a consience, those without, etc.

They were very distinctly showing the prejudices and preconceptions driven into the heads of the average American as well.  When the wounded Japanese Soldier kills a medic and rifleman with a grenade as they tried to help him, one of the Marines watching calls him a "Yellow monkey", which was an image that really was used in propoganda of the times.  They were considered sub-human, and closer to a primate in a way.

I think as time went on, and wounded soldiers returned home and took up training jobs within the corps, that those views were being driven out of the minds of soldiers...  or at least some were trying to wake up the FNG's for their own good that the Japanese weren't weaklings/inferior fighters. 

[Nicklab]

Historical perspective is something that definitely needs to be taken into account with The Pacific.  The US was attacked and that got the American people mobilized.  Men were enlisting in record numbers after the Pearl Harbor attack.  And there were many instances of men taking their own lives because of their 4F draft status.

And in the leadup to this battle?  American forces were being defeated across the Pacific theater in the early months of 1942.  American positions on Wake Island, Guam and the Phillipines had been taken by the Japanese in the leadup to the battle for Guadalcanal.  The situation on Guadalcanal grew more dire as the battle progressed.  The Marines were left to fend for themselves because the Navy ships offshore were driven off by the Japanese.  It makes the Marines lack of mercy seem more understandable.  But it was also shown that Japanese wounded would try to take as many Americans with them, too.

I'm also curious to see what some my uncle who is a WWII veteran would say about this.  He was in the US Army's 25th ID.  He survived the attack on Schofield Barracks by some of the Japanese forces that hit Pearl Harbor.  And he fought with US Army forces on Guadalcanal.  He told me that Terence Malick's film The Thin Red Line captured some of what happened there.  But there's so much more that he's left unsaid.

And is it me, or does The Pacific merit it's own thread?

[Jeff]

And is it me, or does The Pacific merit it's own thread?

Hey!  No threads about war allowed!!!111!!11  

(oops - wrong site.  Carry on.  )