1 Sigh. To watch or not to watch? That is the question.

2 Not. Rip the torrent.

I inform my cable company each and every time I call that I would not take HBO if they paid me so long as Bill Maher has a show on that channel. It is an insult to the servicemen depicted in The Pacific to give them a dime so long as they give that POS an avenue to spout his anti-troop filth.

3 I have mixed feelings about watching "Pacific" but I will. I despise what Hanks said and I know he loves Obama and has always been a whiney liberal, but I will try to put that aside. My dad was with the 4th Marines on Iwo Jima so I'll watch.

4

5 Looks like it's going to be a great show. Let's all watch it. Download, on HBO, or the DVD, any way you want to do it.

6

I plan on watching it to honor the memory of the men like my grandfather both living and dead who hopped from hellish island to island in the Pacific, HBO be damned.

7 I'm torn.  The Pacific looks good, but Hank's ignorance just taints the whole thing.

"Sonny fought with the 1st Marine Division, he was wounded by a grenade that left a piece of shrapnel in his eye that he carried for the rest of his life. He fought with the 1st Marines from there all the way to Ie Shima (near Okinawa).

Sonny didn't have a bitter bone in his body. Not one. I have met few men in my lifetime who endured so much, and yet carried that sense of peace."

Sonny, now that's a man.  Some people think that being "a man" entails bulking up at the local gym and being a complete jerk to everyone.  Sonny did what he had to do, endured hardships that would have completely broken some most others, and yet lived with peace and grace.  RIP, Sonny.

8 The work speaks for itself. 

Were Hanks giving an Exec Producer's narrative, I'd avoid it.  But this kind of movie, provided it's the equivalent of BoB or Blackhawk Down is good for kids growing up playing Modern Warfare to see.

In war, you don't get to respawn.

.

9 If only we had more VDH's or they got equal attention as actors going with the liberal herd.

10

What #2 hindmost says.

http://www.utorrent.com/

NOT ONE THIN DIME!

11 DIT, I hope you will give us a review afterwards. If it is not just another "anti-American" war is hell movies I'll rent it from Blockbuster when it comes out on disk.

12 I'l review it. I'm willing to own up to that Vic, for good or ill.

13 My Father and Mother both were WWII vets from the Pacific. Him a grunt, her a Ambulance driver (WAC). I would love to see this. But, as mentioned above, not one red cent goes to HBO. I'll wait and buy the bootlegged DVD at the flee market.

14

see how I commit my $11.95 a month to you goobers?

 

I give.

 

That's what I do.

15
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”



Thats total horseshit. As an executive at Ethyl Corp. my grandfather traveled extensively to Japan on business and really admired and loved the Japanese people. He carried no grudge after the war or any animosity towards them.

Now what he thought of them while they were firing flak and AAA at him and strafing him while he was in his ball turret as a young man in his early twenties far from the peaceful Ohio farm he grew up on I cannot tell you, but like they say, war is hell.

16 "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa." Get it. Read it.

 I knew a Marine who fought on Bloody Nose Ridge under Captain Pope. He said that only six of them walked off that ridge under their own power. He was one of those six men.

 The first wave  was led by a Marine known as Chesty Puller. Over the next few days, the first Marines were decimated, but they took the objective.

17

Wht the A Bomb was needed

http://tinyurl.com/yzp5z4c

 

OPERATION KETSU-GO

The sooner the Americans come, the better...One hundred million die proudly.

- Japanese slogan in the summer of 1945.

Japan was finished as a warmaking nation, in spite of its four million men still under arms. But...Japan was not going to quit. Despite the fact that she was militarily finished, Japan's leaders were going to fight right on. To not lose "face" was more important than hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives. And the people concurred, in silence, without protest. To continue was no longer a question of Japanese military thinking, it was an aspect of Japanese culture and psychology.

18 I'm looking forward to it. I simply can't understand Hanks, though. He can't possibly be the imbecile he appears to be, can he?

19 I simply can't understand Hanks, though. He can't possibly be the imbecile he appears to be, can he? Posted by: Bugler at March 14, 2010 05:42 PM (YCVBL) What you really mean. He can't possibly be an imbecile and still so rich???

20 18 I'm looking forward to it. I simply can't understand Hanks, though. He can't possibly be the imbecile he appears to be, can he?

He probably wasn't at one point, but Hollywood liberalism destroys the brain.  He really believes that moral equivalence nonsense he said the other day.

21 He really believes that moral equivalence nonsense he said the other day. Posted by: Kratos (on the back of Gaia, scaling Mt Olympus) at March 14, 2010 05:45 PM (otlXg) All progressives do and it is now official USA Policy. Elections have consequences.

22

I'm just curious, what WW II vets did Hanks talk to that referred to the Japanese as "yellow dogs" or is he just projecting his own bigotry here?

23

I think this is what Hanks was talking about; although I still think he's a pos.

http://tiny.cc/6tp2a

24

Tom Hanks should check out that page.

http://tinyurl.com/yzxwxr5

25 My dad fought on Bougainville, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa; one uncle fought on Guadacanal, another on Peleliu and Okinawa, two more in the Marianas (one sadly lost), another on Wake (sadly lost), and rounding out my list of uncles who served in the Pacific (only had two go to the Eurpoean theater), one at Midway (sadly lost).  I've read Sledge and a few others (which don't compare imho), and I'd love to watch this series -- but on the list of things to pay for, this is not high on the list.  I'll wait until it comes out on video and buy it (along with Band of Brothers for my husband).  That way, if it's a crock of shit, I'll know better than to spend my money -- and I'll be pissed, because BoB wasn't too shavvy, so they could at least do as well for the Pacific (which always seems to get shortchanged, probably because of the "evil racism! oh no!" component).

26

23  Well, there was a fair amount of  "slant eyed monkey" talk -- there's no getting around it.  Racism did have a role -- but it always does in every war that's ever happened: everybody demonizes their enemy; always have, always will.

From my own experience, through my father, the biggest issue with racist remarks came from "dumbasses who never killed a man" (as my father called them) after the war, wanting my dad to regale them with stories (which my dad declined to do and really didn't much care for the people asking).  Happened to my uncles as well (and cousins who served in Vietnam) -- they weren't really cool with the idea of reliving those moments of their lives, for good reason.

27 Those noobs didn't know what they were doing back then.  I would've ducked down until my health was restored every time I got shot.

28 Tom Hanks and Matt Damon were Captain Miller and Private Ryan.  Now they're both Major Assholes.

29 How does Hanks explain our Pacific allies - the Chinese and the Filipinos if we were such racists?  How does he also explain our leaving the Emporer in power after the surrender?  or US troops bringing in japanese language experts to try to deter people from committing suicide on Saipan.

30

I'l review it. I'm willing to own up to that Vic, for good or ill.

Thanks

31 I mean, obviously my radar is up. I'm just wondering how actual history plays in this.

32

and by that I mean, it would be stupid to say that racism didn't play a part in some combat. Although I would add.. combat inserts itself at the front of the line. doesn't it?

 

It would be stupider still to say it played a role in war policy.

 

probably saying the obvious here..

33 the bizarre & utterly dumb statement hanks made about ww II is only jarring as he has been dedicated to honoring the servicemen of that war. hanson explains some reasons, to which i would add that it is the kind of emotional detritus that comes from his & spielberg's attention to the experience of soldiers over an understanding of the war, it's causes, reason & our purpose. i suppose it's what to expect of hollywood's approach with the emphasis on emotional empathy to make a point. but the ahistorical stupidity is too much a price (& I include the maudlin nonsense of "saving pvt ryan" in that.) the real offense is hanks' comments on the present war. they reveal the hollywood bubble, of course, but also the malign impact of 8 years of bush bashing (from m. moore to the dem pols to the msm). & if a fellow of the seriousness of hanks can hold the view that we are waging an inhumane racist war, then what of our nominative allies in europe (blair excluded) and our enemies. the price for the hyperbole of hate (for political gain) is truly aid & comfort to our sworn enemies.

34

30  I think Mr. Hanks, in his very limited ideas about the Pacific campaign and warfare in general, has taken the notion of racism being a/the primary motivator for war.  This is a very stupid and foolish way of looking at things, but it seems to have great appeal among certain circles who are either too stupid or too lazy to contemplate anything but single approach discussions of what are in reality very multi-faceted things.

In short, because he's a dumbass.

35

Not me. I'll watch my old "Victory at Sea" DVDs. Better music, too.

My mom was a combat nurse (Captain) in the South Pacific, and my dad's life was saved because he was a combat grunt in Europe and was slated for the first round of the almost-suicidal invasion force of mainland Japan.

Oh, and Tom Hanks?

Suck my cock.

36 currently watching the HBO movie John Adams.  a few yrs old but man o' man is that a good movie.

37 I'm listening to Dale Dye's show on KFI right now talking about his role in the production of 'The Pacific'. He just addressed Hank's statements and gave kind of a weasily answer. He claims that Tom was just pointing out that the Pacific theater was more brutal that the ETO and that atrocities were committed on both sides and that you shouldn't misinterpret Hank's words.

I call bullshit. I respect Dye a lot but I think he's just being political and avoiding confronting what Hanks meant. Now maybe Hanks' day-to-day work on the series didn't reflect any of these revisionist sentiments, but it's fair to wonder after what he's said.

-1 Dale Dye

38 "With the Old Breed" is a great book.

But the best book on the nature of the combat, IMO, is "Touched With Fire" by Eric Bergerud.  It covers in detail the nature of the fighting in Southwest Pac & why the fighting there was much more vicious and no-quarter than the fighting on the Western Front in Europe.

It acknowledges the racism that was present & sometimes promoted, but does a good job of showing the other factors that were more prominent.  E.g the Japanese atrocities, failing to surrender (or faking surrender & then blowing themselves & Marines up), etc.  He even credibly argues how the close nature of the terrain made the fighting more vicious.

In other words Hanks is a dick.  But I'll still watch his show tonight.

39 i would add that they, our enemies, are listening. witness the tapes of bin laden: in 2004 he echoes the dems talking points on the eve of the election, for instance. and most recently he attacked the u.s. for global warming. in some ways, al qaeda is more a product of the west than they themselves understand, and what the media promulgates & the left believes is important to their own efforts tactically and in self-definition.

40 The first time I saw the trailer I couldn't help but cringe at the "cause is just" line at the end. I knew, and everyone else should have too, from that moment exactly what kind of product Hanks was going to throw at us. Wink wink nudge nudge "I have to believe our cause is just," unlike, say, current conflicts! Wink. Nudge. Shut the fuck up,.

41 "Not me. I'll watch my old "Victory at Sea" DVDs. Better music, too." Yeah, that's the gold standard. I'm in awe of the commenters noting their relatives' participation. I can't stand Tom Brokaw, but they truly were our greatest generation.

42 Japan was finished as a warmaking nation, in spite of its four million men still under arms. But...Japan was not going to quit. Despite the fact that she was militarily finished, Japan's leaders were going to fight right on. To not lose "face" was more important than hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives. And the people concurred, in silence, without protest. To continue was no longer a question of Japanese military thinking, it was an aspect of Japanese culture and psychology. Posted by: William Amos at March 14, 2010 05:42 PM (L+kEZ) This is something that idiots like Tom Hanks will never understand. They view everything through the lens of their own time and their own (often very limited) experience. If Hanks had bothered to read the translation of Hirohito's radio message wherein he ordered the cessation of hostilities he would have seen that the Emperor was telling his people that he could no longer ask them to continue fighting against an an enemy that would use "so cowardly a weapon" as the atomic bomb. The Japanese stopped fighting because they believed that by maintaining their "honor" and forcing the enemy to act "dishonorably" THEY WON! Far from being some kind of bloodthirsty racist death orgy the use of the atomic bombs actually ALLOWED THE JAPANESE TO SURRENDER HONORABLY. But Hanks et al would have to pull their empty Hollywood heads out of their left wing Ameri-centric asses to see that.

43 If Mr. Hanks wants to discuss "Race" in regards to Combat Operations, he should interview any of the Bataan survivors. A dear friend of mines father was one. He didn't discuss it much, but he never forgave the Japanese either.

Hank's a typical Hollywood prick, but he has done some very good work on WWII. I just wish someone else would fund him besides HBO. That's my issue. After thirty years in the Army, I have no funds for HBO/Maher/Sikes.

44 That was Hirohito's publicly presented justification for dishonoring himself and his nation by surrendering rather than fighting to the death. The truth is that after Nagasaki the Japanese War Cabinet, which had been split between the hardline militarists and the "realists" for a while, finally tilted towards the "realists" who realized the US wasn't going to stop nuking Japan until Japan surrendered (they had no idea the US had no more atom bombs and wouldn't for months). They really thought that their country was going to be literally wiped off the face of the earth if they didn't surrender.

45 Torrent

46

When does it come on?

 

47 A few years ago Ace wrote a post about Patrick Stewart (Capt Picard from Star Trek: TNG) saying some stupid shit. Ace put it very well when he said it was a shame for Stewart to blow all that goodwill he created just because he couldn't help himself from saying dumb shit about politics and the American people. Tom Hanks had created a lot of goodwill by seeming like a decent man. But now he let us know what he REALLY thinks of you, me, and our country. Fuck you, Tom Hanks, and stick your PACIFIC up your ass.

48 here's a nugget: on the 50th anniversary of ww II's end, i happened to pick up a copy of "the nation" to see their commemorative take. the meaning & point of the war was ... racism! ok, i thought, that's an interesting view. germany and japan were both militantly racist and justified the slaughter of 10's of millions by racist ideologies. but no, of 14 articles, 11 were condemnations of american racism. aha. of course. the left's endemic post viet nam anti-americanism. it's a poison that has become a commonplace coloring even the mentality of apolitical, common-man tom hanks who has been dedicated to honoring our troops & is otherwise sympathetic to the military. pricks.

49

Ans: Tonight at 9 pm

 

50 my response to the anti-nuke crowd is: the only problem with the bomb was we didn't have it two years earlier. how many tens of millions of lives would have been saved.

51

There are right lessons to learn from it, and wrong ones.

On average the wrong ones are committed by the politicians and MSM at home, rather than the fighting troops in battle. So far we have at least 3 wars to back that up. Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

Oh, and Hanks has shot himself in the foot with his mouth this past week or so. Any future WWII vets, or any other era vets for that matter, will not trust him with their stories.

52

But the best book on the nature of the combat, IMO, is "Touched With Fire" by Eric Bergerud.  It covers in detail the nature of the fighting in Southwest Pac & why the fighting there was much more vicious and no-quarter than the fighting on the Western Front in Europe

I have always liked the books of W.E.B. Griffen on WWII, both for Eurpoe and the Pacific. The combat is probably not realistic but you can tell he did do a hell of a lot of historical research.

53

I felt pretty bad for Mr. Toyota. The guy obviously is respectful, honorable and has a lot of pride in the product he has made for so many years only to have the Democrats try and smear his name and his company that employs thousands of Americans to try and boost sales at their unionized government owned auto companies.

54 @45 True enough, but he would not have been able to make the "honorable surrender" argument without the US use of nukes. Conventional firebombing was doing as much, if not more, damage and would have obliterated the country just as completely- albeit not as quickly. The nuclear attacks tipped the balance of power towards the realists, but conventional attacks were having the same effect. The thing that the use of nukes provided that conventional firebombing did not was that they offered "political cover" for surrender.

55 I'm glad I'm not the only one setting my DVR for The Pacific. I was feeling guilty being interested in it after hearing about Hanks viciously anti-American rhetoric. My hopes have been dashed however and am not expecting much anymore.

56 Yeah I did too Blazer, the irony of the whole thing is though that most conservatives drive American even though they are built by unions we hate and mose liberals drive japanese even though they are built by non union workers that they hate. Go figure that conservatives are defending the maker of the fucking prius.

57

E.B.Sledge lived and fought in a particular kind of hell in the Pacific--and wrote a book about it.  He came home, and although he had some difficulties readjusting, he lived out his life as one of the most gentle men ever.

One of myolder  buddies is now lost in late stage Parkinsons, mid stage Alzheimers. But he was an 18 year  old high school graduate who signed up to be a Marine Paratrooper (yup, in 1941 and early 1942, the Marines thought they needed a parachute regiment).  The Marines gave up on paratroops, so Larry got an all expenses paid tour to Guadalcanal in the fall of 42.  Other scenic garden spots that he saw action on were Saipan and Okinawa.    Came the end of WWII and he signed up for the Marine Corps Reserve--and got called back for  a year in Korea including some time at the Frozen Chosin.  Guess the Corps figured that Larry  had had a couple of hot spells, so some cool weather would be a good idea.

Larry was never bitter about any of this.  His country called, he did his duty.  He killed his share of Japanese, North Koreans and Chinese.  His politics are a little different than mine--somehow even though he was an insurance company executive, his politics remained somewhat to the left of FDR. 

 

 

58 -1 Dale Dye

Posted by: Mætenloch

Good thing his moral bank account is large enough to account for it.

59 We have had moneybombs for candidates. I'd like to propose a moneybomb for the people that served in World War 2. Donate here http://www.nationalww2museum.org/giving/ Every little bit helps.

60 My father was US Army Signal Corps on Okinawa and later the Philippines.  Although he never saw any living, breathing Japanese soldiers he was in danger none the less.  My father didn't have much to say about his experiences because he never was shot at except for the torpedo spotted heading for his troop ship - it missed.  My sister has the battalion photograph, and my father said that not one member of his battalion got so much as a stubbed toe from '44 to '45.

61 Oh, and Hanks has shot himself in the foot with his mouth this past week or so. Any future WWII vets, or any other era vets for that matter, will not trust him with their stories. Posted by: Drillanwr at March 14, 2010 06:54 PM (ptybc) These are stories that *need* to be preserved, and you never know where you will find them. My uncle worked as a plumber. Everybody in the family knew he had been in the Air Corps in WWII, but nobody knew anything about what he did and he never said anything about it. All we knew about him was that he was a plumber. About five years ago, after my aunt passed away, we were sitting around his living room after the funeral and I somehow got the impression that he needed to talk, so I asked him about his service in the Air Corps- it went like this: ME: So, ah, what did you do in the Air Corps Unc- did you fly at all? HIM: Oh yes, I flew. ME: Ah, what did you fly in? HIM: B-17s ME: Oh- ah, what was your job on the B-17? HIM: I was a pilot and aircraft commander. ME: (Suppressing a "Holy Sh*t!") Ah, did you fly any combat missions? HIM: Oh yes... ME: How many? HIM: Twenty-five. At that point he finally opened up and started talking about what had happened on some of those missions. Long story short- the man is lucky to be alive! Stories like his need to be preserved to inspire future generations of Americans and show them that liberty is something that is worth fighting for.

62 I'll be watching that tonight, and hoping its even half as good as Band of Brothers

63 My father was a US Navy pilot, flew anti-shipping and submarine missions. He was on Tinian when Paul Tibbets took off from the Army strip next door in the Enola Gay.
The party, he said, was epic.

64 I call bullshit. I respect Dye a lot but I think he's just being political and avoiding confronting what Hanks meant. Now maybe Hanks' day-to-day work on the series didn't reflect any of these revisionist sentiments, but it's fair to wonder after what he's said.

Dye knows who's buttering his bread and wouldn't say shit against Hanks if he had a mouthful.  Dye made himself a load of money being Hanks consultant, and he's not going to shit where he eats.

65 I had an uncle who was a Navy Corpsman on Guadalcanal. For years afterwards, he would frequently start screaming in his sleep. (The only actual anecdote I heard was that he was attending at an operation in a tent, and a Japanese outside the tent stabbed the surgeon mid-operation, killing him.) RIP, Uncle Fritz.

66

"Now 87 and living in Lancaster, Burgin is a significant part of the Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks miniseries The Pacific, which begins tonight on HBO. "

http://tiny.cc/PLvzk

67 Two old guys from Savannah were on Iwo Jima.  They were just interviewed in the local rag.  One of them was a machine gunner who somehow never managed to be injured.  He described hell on earth, and running to get more ammo.  A guy called out, "Hey, you from Savannah?"  It was a guy he went to high school with.  What a story.

And yeah, Mr. D'oh and I will watch tonight.  And as husband says, no matter what our son may go through in the future as a Marine, our country will never stand for another D-Day or Iwo Jima.  That's not a lot of comfort, when your enemy doesn't wear a uniform,hides behind women and children, and will saw your head off for viewing on the internet.

Every war has its demons.  Semper Fi.

68

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

No, it doesnÂ’t.

And worse, it doesnÂ’t sound like what went on back then, either. What it does sound like, though, is a regular guy who became a fat, pampered Hollywood star, who somehow lost the plot, got way too full of himself and now spews slanders about the very men he chronicles in his latest movie.

Hanks gets his history exactly upside down; it was the Nazis and the Bushido militarists, not the Allies, who went to war for “racial purity”.

Now I’ll watch “Pacific” with my political antennae up. I hate that. I don’t know when Tom Hanks became a “Blame America First”-crank, but his history sucks. And his current events aren’t any better. The soldiers serving us today are not genocidal maniacs engaged in a Race War, but as fine as any this nation has ever produced.

69

Just to let you know, the tradition continues.

My middle son, Matt, is in the Marines, has done two tours, one on board the USS Kearsarge, and another in FOB Golistan in Afghanistan.

He called this week, he had to go through his rifle qualification and shot a 323 out of a possible 350 on the range and the combat shoot.

25 y.o. and they are grooming him for Sergeant.

 

 

70 I recently finished the book they used for this series, With the Old Breed, EB Sledge's memoir of Peleliu and Okinawa. With prologue by VDH.
Highly recommended, and it's out in paperback.

71 I'll skip the movie thanks to Hanks and all the moral equivalence assholes. I've got the Purple Heart and 48 star flag that draped my uncle's coffin, and that's all I need. He was with the 27th Infantry Division and was killed in action on Saipan. I never met him, but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him and try to honor his memory. G-d bless him and all who served and gave their lives for our freedom.

72 Almost done with the first hour and I gotta say, I'm not likin it.  Lots of "Americans are racist bastards and cruel to boot stuff".

73 MajHam - Concur.

74

skechers shape ups shoes under sales promotion, all the shape up shoes are sold nearly at its cost and free shipping. It is really high quality and cheap.china mlb jerseys china mlb jerseys

75 That sucked

76 congrat lazarous.  i wish your son the best of luck

77 The book With The Old Breed kicks ass. If you're too pissed at Forrest Gump to watch his HBO mini, read the book. Fuckin' awesome.

78 Boring.

79 Gee, lets see who currently has downed combatants cry for help and then blows up our guys???? Oh oops my bad, not supposed to mention that are we, since islam is the religion of peace.

80

The first episode started out slow with the high school WWII documentary approach.  Telling rather than showing is lazy movie-making.  They didn't really develop the characters like BoB.  They did get us to Guadalcanal in thirty minutes and built the suspense for another ten.  There were a couple good moments with Japanese fanaticism on the battlefield revealed. 

The nits I want to pick are:  The Marines helmets were perfectly clean after humping through the jungle and a couple fights, like they just pulled them off a rack.  Surely there would have been some stains and dirt from burrowing their faces into the dirt during the battle.  Also, these guys don't seem to sweat in the jungle.  I've been in the jungle.  It's hot in there.  Much of the Marine palaver seems cliched, like it's lifted from a '50s movie on WWII.

So I rate the first episode as mediocre with a few brilliant flashes.  The last half hour was better than the first half hour, but the battle seemed kinda antiseptic.  Nine more episodes to go.  Let's see where it takes us.

81 Sorry. No matter what they may do in the future, once an entertainer proves themselves to be a Leftist, anti-american, self-righteous idiot, I don't watch them, read about them, read what they say, read what they write about, buy their music, art, movies or contribute to their causes. By their causes, I mean those that they themselves have set up, not ones they promote or contribute to.

I refuse to contribute my hard earned dollars to their continued attack on my way of life and opinion. It's ridiculous to fund your sworn enemy. Sadly this means a drastic reduction in available entertainment as so many of them are leftist morons or at least useful idiots but that's the way it goes.

82

Hanks could have just pointed out the fact that extreme demonization of the enemy, by both sides, was the norm in the Pacific. And that it (the propaganda and extreme brutality) was driven by racist attitudes. Anyone familiar with the subject could not reasonably dispute that. He could have just shut up right there, and everything would be just hunky-dory.

But then he went there, the liberals favorite realm, the land of Moral Equivalence. I don't think Hanks is a bad man. He means well, he's just a product of his environment.

On the other hand, I also have no use for those that say showing Marines killing surrendering soldiers and desecrating corpses is somehow a horrible slam on the US. It happened. Its documented. Accept it.

83 You know what the hell are they suppossed to do? Say, yeah the Japs are decent upstanding fellows, you would want as your neigbors, but we want you to blow them away anyway? Get real. Villainizing your fellow man is a tried and true method since way back and trying to get soldiers to do a shitty job in the middle of hell aint easy, so making the enemy look bad isn't exactly a shocker.

84

 I didn't care for "The Pacific".

 First, the episode was only 45 minutes long. The previews leading up to the episode probably went on for 20 minutes. I thought that was cheesy.

 Second, the whole thing reeked of the mawkish sentimentality and boomer narcissism that taints any Steven Spielberg production. Spielberg and Hanks seem to view World War II as a journey of self discovery and not an existential struggle against German fascism and Japanese militarism. A kind of Outward Bound with artillery and bayonet charges.

 Lastly, I find the attempt to portray the Japanese as a noble and misunderstood enemy to be insulting.

85 i worked on the pacific. i will not reveal who i am or in what department because this town would crucify me for not being a loony lib. two things you gotta know: 1) the pacific is def no BoB but still good despite the fact that 2) it's made by people who are uber-left. obama campaign workers galore. there are probably going to be a few things you won't like...

86 Posted by: aRightyinLeftywood at March 15, 2010 12:56 AM (r9DeI)

Where is your fuckin patriotism? You have a duty to the Republic to sacrifice your honor, and your sacred fortune, cause if it was good enough for the founders then what is your malfunction?

87 It wasn't horrible, but I'm nowhere near as excited about the next episode as I was with BoB.

It was kind of bland. We really know nothing about the characters, and very little time was spent on actual combat. They talked a bunch about nothingness and then fought for about five minutes.

And the fighting scene was nothing. Nowhere near, say, Bastogne. We fired a few rounds, there was confusion, and then suddenly there's a bunch of dead bodies and reinforcements arrive. A few letters were read and the episode was over.

Not living up to expectations. Certainly not BoB 2.0.

88 There was one brief bit that some might have missed.

While the Marines are moving through the jungle, they come upon some bodies tied to trees. The camera doesn't focus on them for more than a few secs, but you can see that they were Americans and had been tortured to death.

That was, actually, a very common thing in every AO that Japanese soldiers fought in. Torture of captured enemy or conquered civilians. It was part of their program. Not a single battle in a single front or a single campaign in a single area or any command what-so-ever in the Japanese military did not have wide spread atrocity as part of their standard issue entertainment package.

89 Grimmy,

True. But then we got a good 10x as much time on soldiers saying "yellow" and laughing at the fanatic Jap who was committing suicide by soldier.

Never mind the Americans tied to bamboo and beheaded. We were being racist! In 1941....

90 Benson:

Of course. Most of what I put in that comment was aimed at lurkers who may not be any more clued than Useful Idiot Hanks.

91 My old man fought at tarawa. The only thing he has ever said about Japan/the Japanese is that before WW2, they made cheap Christmas lights that were sold in the USA. The lights were pieces of crap that would burn out once you plugged them in. With that prior experience, he said that's what made their attack on Pearl Harbor even more shocking.

He has never liked Tom Hanks and has always referred to him (for the last 20 years) as a 'thumbsucker' (aka. punk). I haven't gotten a chance to ask him what he thinks of Hank's recent nonsense now, but I'm guessing it should be as colorful!

92

What a TURD that first episode was. seemed like they had 45 min to "check the boxes"

Guy tells girl "Ill write"....check

American troops come across atrocity....check

Jap blows himself up with grenade....check

Sensitive soldier puts enemy soldier out of his misery....check

Rousing "why we fight speech"....check

And so on. Among other things the timeline was severely compresed, and there were some other inaccuracies as well. First of all, It would be unlikely that the patrol would run across tortured POWs on their first jaunt into the jungle. The first day of the invasion saw almost no fighting, and the few Japanese troops there were laborers and such. A few weeks later that shit happened with regularity, but they had to show something I guess. As for the battle of Savo island, its not like it happened right off the beach, it was well over the horizon for the troops on the ground. First hand accounts talk of seeing flashes and hearing booms, but it was nowhere near the spectacle they presented it as. Again, they needed something to show off someones FX skills. And finally the Battle of Alligator Creek.....I was so pumped to see this battle brought to the big screen.  Did we get waves of Japanese lit up by the light of starshells, fixed bayonets, swords drawn, charging screaming across the samdbar? The rattle of Marine machine guns cutting them down? The hand to hand combat?.......No. Instead we got some confused shooting, officer who loses it.....check....and then a beach littered with bodies. Did they even research this shit? Next morning they counterattacked with tanks into the coconut grove where the Japanese were regrouping. That shit lasted almost the entire next day, and it was a massacre. But no. Sun comes up, dead bodies, thousand yard stare.....check....and bang, thanks for watching assholes, see you next week.  

And like I said. they compressed the story to where one would think the invasion, Savo Island and Alligator Creek were days apart.whn in fact it was more like weeks. How could they leave out the Goettge patrol? Great job Hanks, you really took a shit with this one....now go fuck yourself.

 

 

93 I said I wasn't going to watch after Tom Hanks made his idiotic comments.  I changed my mind.  The first episode was kind of slow, but I look forward to next week. 

94

Keep in mind that both Stephen Ambrose and Richard Winters were around to advise and provide feedback on Band of Brothers.

Not so with The Pacific. Too much will be left to Hanks/Speilberg and it will suffer for it.

Still worth watching though, probably.  Definitely going to order the books by Sledge and Leckie.

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