Ken Burns's 14 ½ -hour documentary of World War II, in seven episodes, as seen through the eyes of airmen, sailors, Marines, GIs, and civilians, quips from Ernie Pyle, reminiscences from over 40 interviewees, mostly from four towns - Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota - crafted into black-and-white and rare color footage and still photos of the war with an overarching narrative by Keith David plus other voices, including that of Tom Hanks. (About a thousand vets, in their 80s or older, die every day.) Familiar songs of the era provide much of the soundtrack. Former Navy pilot Sam Hynes says there is no such thing as a "good" war, but a necessary or just war is possible.

Somewhere between 50-60 million people were killed between 1939 and 1945, mostly civilians, women and children - thus in terms of fatalities the worst war ever; some 400,000 US military personnel died - telegrams making gold-star mothers of these men and boys. Compared with Europe, Russia, and Asia, the United States suffered the least with the smallest percentage of casualties in relation to its population, which on the home front was never seriously threatened.

Following a back story of the war in Europe and Asia, the attack on Pearl Harbor (sixty years before 9/11) by the Japanese comes, the result of an American decision to cut off oil supplies to Japan for its invasion of China and other Asian countries. Hours later the Japanese bombed the Philippines with Gen MacArthur unprepared. US and Philippine forces numbering 78,000 on Bataan eventually surrendered; the Japanese forced the prisoners (anyone who surrendered rather than died fighting the Japanese concerned to be a coward) on a death march. Survivors were eventually transferred to a POW camp outside Osaka, Japan.

German U-boats sank merchant ships off the eastern US seaboard. The Army segregated Negro soldiers and trained them to fight for freedom overseas while racism and discrimination continued in the States. On the West Coast in 1942 executive order 9066 permitted exclusion of suspected sympathizers of the enemy from militarily sensitive locations; as a result 110,000 Japanese Americans were uprooted and sent to ten internment camps guarded by soldiers with live ammunition (escapees were shot). Young Japanese-American men, such as Daniel Inouye, who would become a senator from Hawaii, were initially classified as "enemy aliens." Later a special segregated unit, the 442nd Combat Infantry Battalion, trained Japanese-American soldiers for front-line combat, leaving their families behind in the barbed-wire compounds.

The actual casualties and conditions were censored in the media (the first photographs since Pearl Harbor of dead Americans - three Marines on a beach in the Pacific campaign, appearing in the pages of Life - weren't authorized until September 1943); soldiers self-censored correspondence to families. Not until June 1942 at the Battle of Midway with a fortuitous defeat of a Japanese fleet (due in part to cryptographers intercepting and decoding enemy messages) followed by the grueling victory at Guadalcanal were the hopes of Americans raised and the expansionist aims of the Japanese thwarted. Yet on Tarawa and other islands in the Pacific in late 1943 through 1944, the weather, terrain, and Japanese resistance cost thousands of lives.

A learning experience for the Americans in the first half of 1943 from serious losses under poor leadership occurred in Tunisia at the outset of the campaign in North Africa before the Allies, under Gen George S. Patton, managed to forge cooperation with the British to defeat Rommel in the desert followed by the capture of Sicily from Mussolini's fascists, while an invasion of France (Stalin having demanded of the Allies a second front since 1941) had to be repeatedly postponed.

The battle from Salerno to Rome, even after the Italians formally surrendered in September, proved to be even worse. Of the three quarters of a million American GIs who fought their way through Italy, over 23,000 would be killed there, among the 312,000 Allied casualties incurred over two years. [While not mentioned in the documentary, historian David M. Kennedy called it "a grinding war of attrition whose costs were justified by no defensible military or political purpose." Rick Atkinson, author of The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, counters by stating: "Certainly, the lessons learned in Italy paid dividends later in the war, especially through the expertise gained in complex amphibious operations at places like Salerno and Anzio, and in fighting as a large, multinational coalition."] For several months in the first half of 1944 the Germans stalemated the Allies at Monte Cassino (my father fought in this campaign) and Anzio. When they finally broke through the German defenses, the American command allowed the Nazi armies to escape.

Over Germany an air war by American and British bombers blasted away at military targets, industrial sites, and cities (some 40,000 died in the fire bombing of Hamburg) in a costly effort at destroying German planes on the ground, fuel and armaments, factories, and civilian morale. The odds against pilots and their crews surviving combat missions were much worse than for GIs on the ground. Nevertheless, the Allies owned the skies by the time of the invasion of France.

By April 1944 the tide began to turn in the Pacific at the same time winds favorable to the Allies blew over Europe. From the west the sea lanes across the Atlantic were finally open, bring men and material; from the east the Red Army was pushing back the Nazis. But hope mixed with dread as D-Day approached.

On June 6th Gen Eisenhower ordered the greatest invasion in history in three phases against Hitler's Atlantic wall in Normandy. First, paratroopers were dropped behind the German defenses, but weather and other conditions were such that many of the men fell into the sea, into flooded valleys, or otherwise off target, leaving them disoriented and scattered; more than half of the gliders (a new innovation) were destroyed. Second, an air assault involving 11,000 aircraft bombed and strafed the enemy, though not as effectively as had been desired. Third, a flotilla attack of 5000 ships carrying 176,000 men and 2000 landing craft steamed across the English Channel. The British and Canadians landed at Gold, Juno, and Sword (code names for their beaches) where they were initially successful at getting ashore and inland.

The Americans landed on Utah and Omaha. At the latter "almost everything would go wrong"; Gen Omar Bradley nearly called off the fight when he witnessed the terrible losses on the beach. Nevertheless, individual initiative and improvisation saved the day. The 2500 American dead - the highest number of single-day fatalities since the battle at Antietam in the Civil War - were fewer than the commanders expected, but then things stalled for three weeks as the Norman terrain with hundreds of hedgerows (advantageous to the Germans) created unanticipated obstacles. But in August breakthroughs occurred from the south and in Italy where Japanese-American soldiers distinguished themselves, resulting in the German army's retreat. On August 25th Paris was liberated; at Falaise the Allies caught the retreating Nazis.

Meanwhile in the Pacific, where the US had gained an edge from intercepted coded messages, having better and more pilots and planes, the battle of the Philippine Sea was fought, involving the Marianas Islands - Saipan, Tinian, and Guam - resulting in 16,500 US casualties (killed, wounded, and missing); 30,000 Japanese dead; and 1000 civilians committing suicide or killed by remaining Japanese soldiers. The lesson the Americans learned from their obstinate enemy was that the intention to die fighting rather than surrender by most Japanese would mean a costly invasion of the Japan itself.

The war would eventually cost Americans $304 billion ($3 trillion in today's dollars), requiring the sale of war bonds; rationing of food, fuel, and other items helped bring the nation together with common sacrifices. One purpose of the documentary was to change some of the statistics from numbers into actual names with human faces and families. The black-and-white film of the war may have implied a long-ago fight that distinguished the good from the bad, right versus wrong, freedom against fascism; but it's also a reminder of the segregation of whites and blacks at home and overseas. The color photography, on the other hand, brings forth an immediacy of the blood and blundering then and now in every war.

The war gets personal: "generals make plans, plans go wrong, and soldiers die." While GIs invent new vocabulary such as FUBAR and SNAFU, their families learn world geography of Europe and the islands in the Pacific Ocean. By September 1944 the Allies have finally liberated most of France and Belgium. A general pronounces that "This war is over," and supplies for winter are cancelled as Operation Market Garden into Holland proceeds. It will be a prototype of George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished."

When paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne ("like khaki dolls hanging below green lamp shades") and gliders land, they are confronted by the Germans' big 88mm guns. Plans go awry as the British get slaughtered at Arnhem and the Americans, pinned down for days, eventually are forced to withdraw, abandoning the operation. Veteran Dwaine Luce says: "Wouldn't want to do it again - couldn't do it again."

In the Pacific, Gen MacArthur wades ashore for the newsreel cameras in his initial effort to retake The Philippines, beginning with Peleliu, a Japanese-held island airfield. Even though the general command no longer felt a threat from the Japanese air force, a tactically needless assault took place: what was expected to require four days turns into a grisly conflict of more than two months, costing the lives of 1200 marines and nearly every one of the 10,000 Japanese.

The fear of being afraid, of seeming yellow, of turning coward haunts the men. Marine Pfc Eugene Sledge later wrote of his experience that he'd "tasted the bitterest essence of war … and it filled me with disgust." He added a devastating realization, "We were expendable ... the ultimate in loneliness," costing him his faith in blundering politicians who send young men to do their fighting.

The Japanese were cruel to their prisoners and began flying kamikaze missions at the US Navy's ships; the Marines took booty from the bodies of dead Japanese defenders, even gold teeth from a badly wounded soldier.

Back in Europe in October the Allies began their assault on the Siegfried Line where Gen John Dahlquist repeatedly displayed his incompetence as a commander. A memorable rescue of the survivors of the "Lost Battalion" of Texas was heroically accomplished by two companies of Japanese-Americans, suffering severe losses in the daring deed. Paul Fussell, then a lieutenant and now a historian, attributed more bad planning, without knowledge of the terrain into which troops were repeatedly thrust, to the horrific casualties in the fog of the Haguenau Forest.

As a way of raising morale after failing to finish the war before winter, the commanders promised every soldier and Marine in Europe a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, but in some instances the congregation of troops together for the meal resulted in a turkey shoot for the Germans.

Quentin Aanenson, a veteran pilot, says: "We are all casualties." A Crow Indian with a heritage of warrior ancestors, Joe Medicine Crow, explains how he may have been the last Plains Indian war chief for his feats in the campaign. Yet most of the military personnel never saw combat; but the infantry, which comprised just 14% of the Army, accounted for seven out of ten casualties during the war.

In December 1944, having lost four million men since the war's beginning and calling upon every available male between the ages of 16 and 60, Hitler ordered a counterattack against the Allies in Belgium at the Ardennes. The American command's overconfidence and lack of intelligence once again cost the troops dearly. During the biggest battle of Europe, lasting six weeks, costing 19,000 American lives and 60,000 wounded, captured, and missing, with winter weather (the coldest in memory) taking its toll on poorly clad and shod troops (thousands lost toes, fingers, and feet to frost bite), "marching from one horror to another" (in Paul Fussell's words), "getting hardened to gruesome sights" (in Burnett Miller's words), reinforced by green teenagers just out of high school and six weeks of training, the 101st Airborne held onto Bastogne until the tanks could get through in the Battle of the Bulge. Both sides at times refused to take prisoners or murdered them in cold blood. In conclusion the Nazis were repulsed, suffering 100,000 losses as well as most of its remaining tanks and aircraft with no substitutes available.

Back in the States telegrams and headlines announced the grim toll. Though they were often pacifists and conscientious objectors and received $10 less than their fighting counterparts, medics were heroes and lifesavers who had to make terrible decisions of triage. Yet one out of every four casualties evacuated from the battlefront was a victim of shell shock, battle fatigue, combat exhaustion - psychic damage by whatever name.

Gen MacArthur finally retook The Philippines in March after a month's combat during which Manila was destroyed and some 100,000 civilians killed. The internment camp of 3700 mostly American civilians was liberated; a twelve-year-old child recalled the odor of corpses and big green flies everywhere.

On February 4th on the Black Sea at Yalta the Big Three held their conference, deciding on zones of occupation. Nine days later the Allies dropped incendiary bombs on Dresden, creating a firestorm that took the lives of 35,000 civilians. Throughout March more cities were struck by more than 163,000 tons of bombs, killing 593,000 Germans, mostly women and children.

Similarly B-29s began flying from Saipan in an air war over Japan. But in between on Iwo Jima an airfield needed to be captured to put an end to Japanese fighter planes harassing the B-29s. After extensive air and naval bombardment, the Marines landed on February 19th to begin a nearly month-long struggle against 21,000 Japanese dug into a network of caves and tunnels. Every Japanese soldier of the garrison perished; 6821 Marines died, leaving their blood on the sands.

On March 9th 334 Allied aircraft firebombed Tokyo, destroying the city, killing 100,000 Japanese, leaving another million homeless. More cities were targeted, including Osaka, causing another 50,000 deaths. A memo of assurance from the Allied command went out to US pilots responsible for dropping the bombs, explaining that because the Japanese government had required its entire population to enlist in its civil corps, which was being trained and exhorted to fight to the death if invaded, all Japanese were not innocent civilians but legitimate targets for the bombings.

With the coming of spring, optimism of victory in Europe began to bud. In March the Allies were driving into the heart of Nazi Germany. Gen Patton urinated into the Rhine River in front of his troops and then ordered a special mission to liberate his son-in-law and other prisoners from a nearby POW camp, but the effort was only partly successful.

"We weren't heroes," admitted a Hispanic veteran. "We were guys who were there, and we did what we were supposed to do." Sam Hynes, a veteran Marine pilot, says in an interview: "No evil, no God, I think. No evil, no wars."

The air and sea bombardment of Okinawa begins in March 1945 against 100,000 Japanese dug into the hills. "Floating chrysanthemums," hundreds of kamikaze pilots, who believe that by dying for their country a special place in heaven will be reserved for them, attempt to crash into the US fleet off shore. On the first of April 75,000 Americans land on Okinawa, initially without resistance. On the Japanese mainland 168,000 US POWs are told that they will be killed if their comrades invade.

The United States mourns the death of FDR. From the east the Nazis flee the Soviet onslaught bent on revenge. On 30 April Berlin falls to Stalin's army; Hitler commits suicide in his bunker. The Allies continue mopping up operations in the west. Daniel Inouye relates how he was repeatedly seriously wounded charging into German machine-gun nests until he fell unconscious, was carried to the rear by German prisoners, and received 17 units of blood donated by black Americans; for his bravery he eventually received the Medal of Honor 55 years later.

More than 100 concentration camps and subcamps were liberated, making the war suddenly seem more like a crusade. Six million Jews, four million Soviet prisoners, two million non-Jewish Poles, and hundreds of thousands of handicapped, homosexuals, and other undesirables died in the death camps. "No apology can ever atone for what I saw," says Ray Leopold, who was one of the GIs who witnessed the horror of the holocaust.

When the US forces moved against the Japanese defenses in southern Okinawa, around Shuri, they entered hell, suffering their worst casualties in the Pacific theater: 12,000 killed and 60,000 wounded. The Japanese lost 92,000 dead soldiers and 100,000 civilians. With the ground thickly littered with corpses, maggots and feces washed into the trenches during the heavy rains. Eugene Sledge would later write of his experience in With the Old Breed that it was "too horrible and obscene … flung into hell's cesspool."

President Truman joined Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in July where they issued the Allied ultimatum to Japan, but the Japanese government rejected the demand of unconditional surrender. The USS Indianapolis delivered a secret cargo to a waiting B-29 called the Enola Gay; a few days later the ship was sunk by a torpedo on the next leg of its voyage, leaving its crew of more than 1200 floating in the sea for over four days, fighting off sharks, before they were rescued (only some 300 survived). On August 6th the first atomic bomb laid waste to Hiroshima. Soon after the Soviet Union declared war against Japan followed by a second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Not realizing that the Americans had no more nuclear weapons, the Japanese emperor in Tokyo agreed to surrender under the Allies' conditions. By some estimates the deaths of a quarter million Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the Allies half a million additional deaths, as well as millions of Japanese, had the invasion of the mainland been necessary. Nevertheless, some Americans felt uneasy with having been the first nation to use such a weapon against civilians.

With VJ-Day the Second World War ended. Black American veterans returned to much the same racism and segregation as they had left, especially in the South. Millions of boys came home as men, comrades in courage, with "inner casualties," forever in the grip of an intense terrible hug from the war, who would be haunted by nightmares of what they had witnessed and participated in for the rest of their lives. Those who had not seen the bloody maw of war with its gory fangs and claws would not be able to appreciate what those who had had been through, and so for the most part the veterans kept it to themselves.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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