The documentary starts off with a story of a young man in Mobile Alabama who learned that his professed love was spurned by his sweetheart. Devastated by the rejection, he drove off on his motorcycle in the middle of the night looking to drink his misery away. Even that simple attempt failed as the bar tender refused to serve the under-aged man.After wandering the night, he enlisted in the army and eventually chose to deploy in the Pacific front instead of troubled Europe.

Little did he know that the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor will be laying the horrific war path ahead of him for the next 4 agonizing years. He served under MacArthur in the Philippines. As the Japanese closed in, MacArthur took off in a small boat with his family, leaving thousands of American soldiers and civilians to surrender to the enemies. The young man survived the Bataan Death March and endured savage years as POW in Japan.

frazier

Eventually, the determined man survived the war and headed home after Japan surrendered. Years earlier, the army had informed his family of his "death." When he placed a call home, his mother, his aunt and sister– all fainted after hearing his voice. His father instead spoke with calmness and with certainty; he told his son "I knew you’d make it!"

The young man’s sweetheart, who had a change of heart and had been waiting for his return all these years, decided on marry someone else after learning of his "death". Three days after his return home, the man’s sweetheart married another gentleman.

The War is a documentary that reconstructs WWII through microscopic stories like this one. I finished watching most the 15+ hours. Very powerful stuff; as usual, it’s the story-telling of Ken Burns that makes the documentary engrossing. In fact, unlike The Civil War, Burns used no historians or experts to dissect events and provide history lessons. I had expected that and do wish Burns had worked that in. Instead, Burns tells the war through sole the accounts of people at war and at home, barely mentioning Hitler and the likes. This bottom up approach offers a unique and very personal account of the war. While not as good as The Civil War, I thought is an exemplary piece work– 6 years in the making. I also wished McCullough was the narrator.

I hope some of the politicians like Bush, some of Japanese politicians and that idiot Ahmadinejad, watch it and learn from history.

Take-away points, learned or appreciated, from the documentary:

  • General MacArthur was a coward
  • The horrible Bataan death march
  • Terrible sacrifices of that generation
  • Bad planning contributed much to heavy losses of the war
  • The greatest generation is disappearing: about 1000 WWII veterans die each day. In fact one of the man featured in the documentary recently passed away.
  • A Marine said "I don’t think there is such a thing as a good war. There are sometimes necessary wars."
  • One mother’s all four sons died in the war. She learned 2 of her sons died on the same day.
  • Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye gave a Rambo-like effort taking out 3 machine guns firing at his men and got hurt in multiple places. He finally received his Medal of Honor 55 years later for that effort!
  • Some veterans have post traumatic stress for decades, some never really recovered wholly