"The Pacific" Part 4

[lyric1]

Spielberg's father was with the 490TH bomb squadron called the Skull & wings squadron it served in the CBI. He has always bent over backwards for those guys in WWII in real life & in his movies & has tried to show realistically the most he can with out it being rated out of existence.

[trax1]

I haven't seen any evidence of any kind anti war message yet, so far just basically the story of what actually happened.

[Saxman]

The high civilian deaths will be a touchy subject to cover.   They may thus avoid it.  The US view is that the high death toll was the fault of the Japanese military and their government's propaganda, and not the fault of US military action.  In contrast, the Japanese describe the American troops as bloodthirsty savages, bent on murder and rape.

Hopefully the series will not show disputed acts like US troops mass raping young little girls, as the Japanese have claimed happened.   If it does, I will never watch HBO again.

.

There's a HUGE difference between trying to pass off blame and a total whitewashing of history. You're advocating the latter.

Atrocities WERE committed by Americans against the Okinawans. It DID happen. However while the Okinawans have said that the Americans committed rape and murder as well, they have ALSO outright said that what the Americans did wasn't a drop in the bucket compared to the Japanese Army's almost assembly line process of rape and pillage.

[Stoney]

Atrocities WERE committed by Americans against the Okinawans. It DID happen.

What's your source here Sax; I'm curious?

[guncrasher]

What's your source here Sax; I'm curious?

dude, it happened everywhere in ww2.  Americans were just as good as executing prisoners and civilians as Japanese and Germans were.  not trying to judge or condemned anybody that fought in ww2, but it did happened.  remember in band of brother when captain winters asked one of the soldiers to escort prisoners back to hq, then he orders him to drop all his ammo and only gives him one bullet.  and he says to him, if he kills one prisoners the other will jump him?  that was based on a true story, the guy was knows for executing every single German soldier that he could get his hands on.  Am I judging him? no, his family was Jewish and some got killed by the Germans so he wanted revenge  but then again I dont justify it either.  read books from people that were there and they all mention how they saw prisoners and sometimes civilians being executed,.  It is just war, not an excuse but some soldiers for whatever reason, will kill for no reason.  it has happened since the civil war all the way to now.

semp

[Dawger]

The current anti-war movement in the United States was started by the WWII generation. It is their kids who took what their parents started and turned it into what happened in the 60's and still is going on today.

Everyone should be anti-war.

I am very much against war. I just happen to believe that the best way to prevent one is a very strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. WWII in my mind would have been a much smaller conflict or resolved without bloodshed if the west had not tried to be isolationist, negotiate with Hitler, engage in arms limitation agreements etc etc.

We are about to make the same mistakes.

The argument isn't about who is anti-war and who isn't. Only a child thinks war is something "fun". The argument is about how to best prevent the next war or at least prevent the global conflicts that kill by the millions.

[Stoney]

dude, it happened everywhere in ww2.

Sax is talking about U.S. Marines purposefully killing Okinawan civilians.  That's different from what happened to the combatants.  I'm not saying its not possible.  I lived in Okinawa for a while, and know a good bit about the history of the battle.  I'd never heard of Marines committing documented atrocities against the civilian population there, so I'm curious.

[Saxman]

Check out this story, for starters:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/01/world/3-dead-marines-and-a-secret-of-wartime-okinawa.html?pagewanted=1

And this, written by an American serviceman:

"There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians - and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately." (excerpt from The Battle of Okinawa by George Feifer).

But if you read my original post, I said there was a HUGE difference between the actions of the handful of Americans involved, and what was essentially state-sponsored by the Japanese.

[Stoney]

Check out this story, for starters:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/01/world/3-dead-marines-and-a-secret-of-wartime-okinawa.html?pagewanted=1

And this, written by an American serviceman:

"There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians - and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately." (excerpt from The Battle of Okinawa by George Feifer).

But if you read my original post, I said there was a HUGE difference between the actions of the handful of Americans involved, and what was essentially state-sponsored by the Japanese.

The first example is something that happened during urban combat.  Not exactly an "attrocity".  Indiscriminate fire is just that, indiscriminate--meaning it wasn't aimed at anyone.  The second example is an "urban legend" of sorts that has never been proven.  I was over there right after they found those remains and all that was found were remains.  The story came out after the bodies were found.  Oddly enough, that story was printed in the NY Times right around the time another high-profile off-base alleged rape case was under investigation.

[-tronski-]

It seems to me like its pushing the anti-war message down the viewers throat.

I must've blinked through that bit because in the 4 so far I haven't seen anything like it.



In Part 4 my wife actually sat and watched it, and after explaining a few points about the story when the mortar training scene came up she asked whether lot of japs were called Tojo - after explaining who Tojo actually was, I did have to make mention that probably not too many japs were actually named F face however!

 Tronsky

[Tango]

If your showing the lives of individual soldiers in the battles they were in some what realistically how could you be Pro war? My father was a WWII & Korean war Vet with the Australian army he loved war movies but always would tell me that the movies were always total BS not even close to the horrors he witnessed & the false bravado of a John Wayne movie.

I would say so far it is a fair to good portrayal of how those guys dealt with the situation they had to live with based off what so little my father would discuss.

My father was a tail gunner in a B-29 in Korea, so I have heard from him what it was like. He didn't like to talk about it either.

I guess I'm just a bit biased by Hanks remark about how they were racists. Whats missing is any talk about being there to stop the Japs form taking over and what they did at PH. WW2 was a justified war, but I keep getting the impression that they all want to pack up and go home. I'm grateful they didn't do that and took the war to them and saved the free world.

Band of Brothers was FAR better.

[WWhiskey]

The current anti-war movement in the United States was started by the WWII generation. It is their kids who took what their parents started and turned it into what happened in the 60's and still is going on today.

Everyone should be anti-war.

I am very much against war. I just happen to believe that the best way to prevent one is a very strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. WWII in my mind would have been a much smaller conflict or resolved without bloodshed if the west had not tried to be isolationist, negotiate with Hitler, engage in arms limitation agreements etc etc.

We are about to make the same mistakes.

The argument isn't about who is anti-war and who isn't. Only a child thinks war is something "fun". The argument is about how to best prevent the next war or at least prevent the global conflicts that kill by the millions.

+1

[Gooss]

dude, it happened everywhere in ww2.  Americans were just as good as executing prisoners and civilians as Japanese and Germans were. 

semp

Read "The Rape of Nanking" and then try to equate the Americans and the Japanese.  One estimate is 30 million Chinese killed by the Japanese.

[Fishu]

I am very much against war. I just happen to believe that the best way to prevent one is a very strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. WWII in my mind would have been a much smaller conflict or resolved without bloodshed if the west had not tried to be isolationist, negotiate with Hitler, engage in arms limitation agreements etc etc.

Alas, that's not the only thing that went wrong in the chain of events leading to the WWII. Things went sour since the treaty of versailles (the end of WWI), it was a bad peace treaty.

[Fishu]

Read "The Rape of Nanking" and then try to equate the Americans and the Japanese.  One estimate is 30 million Chinese killed by the Japanese.

I must agree that Japanese were far by worse than Americans or Germans, especially with the treatment of PoWs.