It turns out there's some controversy over Tom Hanks' recent comments on the series. See Newsreal, "Tom Hanks: US Wanted to Annihilate the Japanese Because They Were ”Different”." There's a link there to Big Hollywood as well, which has more details. And more at Pundit & Pundette, "Tom Hanks on why we fought the Japanese."
Tom Hanks is a patriot. He's put enough chips in the hero bank to last for a long while. So I'll wait to watch the film before I hammer any of those involved in the production.
That said, there's a review at the Orlando Sentinel, "‘The Pacific’: HBO Miniseries is a Season High Point":
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg want to send you to war.
Go. It is worth enlisting in “The Pacific,” their stupendous miniseries that re-creates World War II with gut-wrenching power. The 10-part drama, a pinnacle of the TV season, starts at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO.
“The Pacific” is not for the squeamish. The production plunges viewers into the mud, chaos and terror as Marines fight through hellish conditions at Peleliu, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. ”The Pacific” smashes war-movie cliches to explore the Marines’ sacrifices and challenges. The men bicker, cry and suffer.
“We’re all afraid, all of us,” an officer confides. “The man who isn’t scared out here is either a liar or dead.”
Anyone who has seen “Saving Private Ryan” knows the drill. Yet “The Pacific” deepens the experience by depicting the Marines’ lives after the war. ”The Pacific,” which cost $200 million to produce, surpasses ”Band of Brothers,” the Hanks-Spielberg miniseries about World War II in Europe
Thanks for the blog. I saw the first episode of The Pacific at the 1st Marine Divisions Anniversary celebration at Camp Pendleton. I was invited to attend by one of my WWII veteran friends. Bill had been on Guadalcanal. I work on Guadalcanal and some of the other Solomon Islands 2-3 times a year providing volunteer surgical services to the people living there. They need it. It is amazing to walk the roads and paths that the marines and Seabees created. WWII airstrips (both active and inactive) dot the many islands making up the country. The waters around Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Munda are teeming with WWII wrecks. I have had a chance to visit many of the battlefield sites on Guadalcanal as well. It is a very humbling and spiritual place due to the sacrifices made there 68 years ago. My family knows this first hand. As our team of doctors heads over to Tulagi from Guadalcanal we traverse Iron Bottom Sound where my mother's brother, Billy Stack's ship the USS Quincy CA-39 was sunk during the Battle of Savo Island on August 9th, 1942. Billy went down with his ship in that battle. Thats how I got started working there. There is one doctor for every 20,000 people in Solomon Islands. Sadly there is no official US involvement in Solomon Islands. Our NGO pays our own way.
ReplyDeleteI for one am looking forward to the Pacific Series for the history it will show and hope that a look back at this special time might get people in the US to look at where these island nations are today. Thanks for your detailed blog.
I’ve spent some time on Guadalcanal and the Solomons (New Georgia, the Florida Islands, other places). Enough to say Hanks/Spielberg have done a good job of bringing to life the horror of the Battle Of The Tenaru, in which the 1st Marines slaughtered many hundreds of the elite Echiki battalion, who never lost a battle in Manchuria by using the tried and true tactic of a full-press night attack on fortified positions. When were there in ‘02, locals still dreaded big storms, because they always unveiled human bones on the N. side of the river the 1st Marines misidentified as the “Tenaru” (now called the “Alligator River”).
ReplyDeleteThe cool thing is I actually recognized my uncle, then Capt. Elmer Salzman, at least in spirit, who was awarded the Silver Star for his actions at that time, specifically, calling on his combat experience in the inter-war years (Honduras, Haiti – “Caribbean bandit campaigns”, in which he was awarded the Navy Cross), to rally and reorganize their defensive positions. It wasn’t Gen. Vandergrift’s idea, eventhough he got the Congressional Medal Of Honor and then kicked upstairs as Commandant of the Marine Corps. Honduras isn’t that different than Guadalcanal. Capt. Salzman, my uncle, uniquely recognized that, and it was he, Capt. Salzman who lobbied General Vandergrift to reinforce their positions where the Ichiki regiment attacked at night, and were subsequently slaughtered. My uncle said very, very little of this. What I mostly know is because I wrote the Records Dept. In St. Louis, and, after 6 months, and to my astonishment, produced a week by week account of Capt. Salzman’s (later to be Major General Salzaman) week by week account of his duty cycle from Guadalcanal all the way thru Okinawa. By the way, if you think he looked something like the “John Wayne” image…he was 5’ 5”, kind of stock/pudgy, prematurely balding…but he was A LEADER, not a Hollywood central casting type….. However, he was, according to his older sister, my grandmother, never the same after the war….