"The Pacific" concludes tonight

[Seneca]

Part 10, which deals with the surrender of Japan, and the fate of the war's survivors.

Hard to believe it is over after all these weeks. It has been a wrenching and cathartic experience for much of the way.

Anyone else planning to watch? Although it's on HBO, DirecTV subscribers should be able to catch the re-broadcast in a few days on T101. Otherwise, renting the DVD's would be a good way to go.

[lunatica]

1. I am

It's been an incredibly intense experience for me. I don't think I'll ever forget the sound effects of bullets zinging by and the peculiarly chilling thump they make when hitting bodies.

And for the first time I kind of understand why Truman used atomic bombs to stop the war. I still think it was unnecessary, but I can understand why some people would think it was. This program definitely shows just how determined the Japanese soldiers were. I think if they had surrendered the world might be a very different place today. We wouldn't have propelled ourselves into a world military power if we had never used the atom bombs on Japan.

Maybe not though. Stalin very quickly acquired the secret of making the bomb. I guess someone would have used it anyway.

[pokerfan]

5. I was dreading the Okinawa episode

Unlike the other islands (Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Tarawa, etc.) Okinawa had a huge civilian population.

Nobuaki Kinjo was 16 when he murdered his mother, six-year-old brother and four-year-old sister. Then he went looking for Americans to kill. "We went insane," he told a court recently. "We were told by the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army that we should commit suicide rather than be captured."

More than six decades after those horrific events, Mr Kinjo is fighting another war against government censorship. Now a 78-year-old Baptist missionary, he will be one of about 50,000 people marching today in the tiny Pacific island of Okinawa, whose population has been angered by plans to censor school textbooks.

Mr Kinjo's experience, and others like it, is woven into the history of Okinawa, the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. Locals still remember receiving grenades – known as gifts of love from the Emperor – to save bullets in mass suicides. But this year, Tokyo in effect declared that such events never took place.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japanese-outraged-by-rewriting-of-okinawa-history-403861.html">Japanese outraged by rewriting of Okinawa history

[Seneca]

8. We wouldn't have made it if we didn't intend to use it

Truman's decision was pretty much a foregone conclusion. FDR would have used it. They didn't spend all that money and do all that research to merely use it as a threat - especially as its true power was still largely an x-factor. Now that we do know the power of atomic weaponry, and knowing that the missiles of the Cold War era are even more deadly, it is worth reminding ourselves that the 2 bombs used in Japan are still the only 2 used in the history of warfare.

My wife's uncle is a USMC veteran of the Pacific Theater, and he was 100% certain that if we invaded Japan, he wouldn't have lived to see his 25th birthday. That's what makes war hellish - either way there was going to be needless and wasteful deaths. The question came down to do we stop the killing from both sides sooner rather than later? It's quite certain that for all the loss of life the two bombs caused, there certainly would have been more deaths, civilian and military, Japanese and Allied, had an invasion occurred. Consider that it did take 2 bombs to force the surrender - an invasion could have prolonged the war for who knows how long. "Surrender" wasn't in the mindset of the Japanese.

In any event, there is no way to convince my uncle-in-law otherwise. And he would be the first to tell you how brutal and dehumanizing war can be. He is more open than many vets I have met about the true horrors of war - and he does not sugarcoat it.

This is not to dismiss or discount your view - just offering a perspective involving someone who earned his opinion in the worst way possible.

[Blue_In_AK]

2. We've been watching,

and it's been harrowing. I've never been in battle, but it seems like these scenes are horribly authentic.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear Seneca!

We will be there!

It's been awesome, wrenching and much more.

I want to see how it gets wrapped up...

[Paladin]

4. Great Series. Highly Recommended. (n/t)

[Old Troop]

6. God, I hope we win

[Duer 157099]

7. I still need to watch episode 9

I guess Saipan won't be covered?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. They did not cover Saipan. (nt)

[Seneca]

10. It wasn't intended to be comprehensive

It's just such a far-reaching theater, with so many angles from which to choose. So Spielberg and Hanks narrowed it down by basing it on three separate marine memoirs, including the diary of John Basilone. In fact, if not for Basilone's story, Iwo Jima wouldn't have been covered even as briefly as it was - because Spielberg mentioned that Clint Eastwood already gave Iwo Jima such excellent treatment in his two back-to-back films (which included the until-now-overlooked Japanese perspective), and therefore he didn't think it needed coverage beyond Basilone's death there.

[Duer 157099]

11. Makes sense

I didn't really expect it to be comprehensive and frankly... I'm glad they didn't cover Saipan, because it would have been awful. I mean, awful to watch because they don't use kid's gloves (Spielberg et al, I mean).

[Seneca]

12. Tonight was more emotional drainage

The psychological reality of trying to return to 'normal life' back at home.

[Iggo]

13. Damn! I better start watching it then.

Yep, 10 episodes racked up on my DVR.

Whaddaya know...