http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092101507.htmlThe Story We Needed Ken Burns to Tell
By Cecilia Alvear
Saturday, September 22, 2007; Page A17
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As a Latina, I've unfortunately run across another kind of Ken Burns effect, one that leaves Hispanics largely invisible in those documentaries.
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For " The War," his 14 1/2 -hour PBS series that begins tomorrow, Burns concentrated on how World War II affected the lives of people from Sacramento; Waterbury, Conn.; Mobile, Ala.; and Luverne, Minn.
I recently attended a screening of highlights of "The War." I found it stunning, moving and sadly incomplete. Deftly cutting between the battle lines and the home front, Burns shows the cruelty of war in intimate detail. We see hundreds of bodies floating in the ocean during the Pacific campaign. We see the injustice of a black soldier from Mobile serving his country in a segregated Army. We see law-abiding Japanese Americans herded off to internment camps.
During a segment on the liberation of Nazi death camps, a Jewish American veteran bitterly describes the atrocities he saw there. A woman in the row behind me began sobbing audibly as the film illustrated the veteran's words with shots of emaciated survivors.
Yet nowhere in the powerful original production did Burns include the stories of Latinos affected by the war. As many as half a million Hispanics served in World War II and earned at least 13 Medals of Honor. They returned to a country where they, like blacks, were treated as second-class citizens.