The Pacific

Wikipedia says that Robert Leckie worked as a sports writer before WWII.

 

You have to develop the characters to make these things work; the war itself isn't suspenseful, we know what's going to happen, it's a war. The viewers have to care about the people in the story, and the writers have done a pretty weak job of that here.

 

I've not seen but wondering if series is tempered so as not to offends our friends and former enemies.

Funny some of the best WWII movies with character development were Pacific based-- From Here to Eternity, In Harms Way, Midway, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Frog Man.

 

Given that every single reference is to "Japs," "Nips," "Yellows," and "Rapists," I'd say no. BTW, my WWII Pacific-vet father used that language pretty much up to the day he died. No one seemed to mind, seeing how he survived 6 beach landings.

 

There's only been two episodes. The creators are focusing more on just three characters (Leckie, Basilone and Heart Murmur) rather than the whole company. Comparing it to Band of Brothers is inevitable, but I feel unfair because BoB was so, so great.
I thought the second ep was great. Basilone single-(burnt)handedly turned the tide in that ambush with the enemy. His storyline in the next episode looks interesting as well.
I read somewhere there wasn't much setup story-wise in the series because that's how it was in the war. The soldiers were just put in the middle of "the shit" and the viewers are expected to keep up.

 

Love the unvarnished salty language of the WW II generation. I grew up with some Uncles that sound like your dad.

 

Basilone was the only enlisted Marine in World War II to receive the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross, he held off 3,000 Japanese troops after his 15-member unit was reduced to two men on Guadalcanal.

I find myself watching Pacific and reading Wikipedia at the same time. I've read a fair number of books on the Revolutionary War and Civil War periods but am pretty deficient in WWII, though I did read Ambrose's D-Day. The Lt Col they refer to as Chesty, is Chesty Puller, the most decorated marine of WWII, and possibly the most decorated Marine, ever.

I never watched BoB until after I watched episode 1 of Pacific. Now we (Mrs. Abbott) watch an episode of BoB each night, on demand.

 

I probably won't be seeing this one until it hits DVD, alas. Which, like "Band of Brothers," I'll probably buy unseen on general faith that it's good.

Even "Band of Brothers" didn't make me care about the characters out of the gate. Winters started out pretty strong but still wasn't really started on development until the second or third ep. The rest of them took even longer. It's only as I watch the early eps over again that I'm invested in the characters at "Curahee," because I know what they're going to evolve into.

 

If you want to read something good on The Pacific Theatre - read Ghost Soldiers. It's about the Battan Death March/ their years as POWs and their daring rescue from prison camp.

 

"Ghost Soldiers" is great. The recently deceased Bert Bank, longtime producer of Alabama football on the radio and a Bataan survivor, was a major source for that book.

I'd also recommend "With the Old Breed," the E.B. Sledge memoir on which "The Pacific" is partly based. Read it for a WWII class I took in college and it's outstanding.

But maybe the best book about World War II --- and perhaps about any subject in American history, period --- is Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Naturally, it deals mostly with the development of nuclear technology and the Manhattan Project, but of course contains a a great deal of information about the Pacific Theater and the Japanese mindset during the war.

 

There is always "The Naked and The Dead" too. But it is a bit like many of you are describing this mini-series. Easier to admire than enjoy.

 

The production is astounding. It's a 10-hour war movie on an epic scale.

There's more focus in narrowing down the central cast. If there was one criticism yo be made of Band of Brothers, it was that the stories of the individual soldiers lose their way under the weight of a massive cast of characters.