The War - "It Happened, I Saw It, I Know"

The Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any one accounting. This is the story of four American towns and how their citizens experienced that war.

The Second World War is personal for me. I have no memory of it and on the outside, having been born more than twenty years after it ended, some would wonder how I can say that. I exist largely due to the fact that my birth-grandfather was so affected by the war (he lost a leg in it) that his family suffered. My birthmother was born within a year of the end of the war and has the scars from his own emotional scars to prove it. My father who raised me was about to be shipped out from California and an Uncle was on a ship in the Pacific when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. With an estimated cost of 500,000 American/Allied lives to force a Japanese surrender (they were training women and children in combat so as to cause invaders to have to fight literally to the end) there's a good chance that one or both of them would not have survived. I exist, for better or worse, because of the events and choices made then.

Thinking abut how the events of nearly sixty years ago have had such a profound impact on my life, I watched the Ken Burns documentary The War. With 1,000 veterans of the Second World War dying every day, Burns felt it was important to capture their memories as well as the memories of those who lived through the war back home. Burns solicited material and gave many veterans a chance to voice their experience. The additional stories of the civilians who experienced the war on the home front are something quite new when getting an idea of the entire picture.

The War is different than other documentaries about World War II. It doesn’t have the clean look of the old movies about it, either. The gritty realism is there, both in memories and in the recreated scenes from Burns.

The central theme is how the war affected four American tows: Sacramento, California; Luverne, Minnesota; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Mobile, Alabama. The War shows how the physical look and population of the towns changed over the course of the war. Between men and boys going away, refugees from Europe coming to live there, and war plants springing up, these towns went through great changes.

Burns has compiled interviews with residents from those towns; both those that stayed behind and those that served in the armed forces. He has intricately woven the stories together with footage from home and overseas to create a terrific narrative that’s something everyone can relate to.

The story that stayed with me the most was that of Glenn Frazier, who joined a peace-time army in the Phillipines after being jilted and ended up in the Bataan Death March and Japanese Internment Camps. The horrors he recounts are sobering and shocking.

Despite all of the flag-waving that gets shown as our soldiers are depicted as one-upping the enemy at every turn in nearly all movies and documentaries I've seen, the truth was that we got the crap beat out of us in North Africa. Even General Eisenhower agreed that our soldiers were nowhere near ready to fight and the British feared they would not be able to help in an invasion of Europe. The soldiers eventually did come together and turn the tide, but this side of the war was something I hadn't heard about before.

I also had never heard about the effects the influx of workers had on the industrial war towns. Mobile, Alabama ended up with "the worst schools in the nation" for the simple reason that they were so overcrowded with the children of workers in the war plants.

Burns touches on things many people don't like to think of when we get on patriotic airs thinking about World War II. When talking about Sacramento, the subject of the Japanese internment camps comes up. At the same time, there were Japanese-American soldiers fighting and distinguishing themselves in battle, while their family and friends were interned in those camps .

Likewise, the segregation of the black troops is discussed. They were never given the same opportunities as white draftees and enlistees, and when there were some opportunities granted them it was on a much smaller scale. One soldier injured in the Pacific had trouble getting a haircut on a hospital ship until the Captain of the ship intervened.

Time is spent on all the minorities, including the Native Americans beyond what is known about their help developing a code that couldn't be broken. In fact, after viewing the documentary, Hispanic Americans were noticeably absent and complained to Burns, who researched their participation and added a chapter detailing their contribution to the war effort.

To tell these stories, Burns uses old newsreels in addition to black and white photographs. He uses maps like many others have before, but by far, the personal accounts of experiences during the war, both at home and overseas, are what resonates with the viewer. The Newsreel footage of President Roosevelt in 1945 shows how exhausted and weary he was. I loved the color footage of the liberation of Paris, as well as the photographs.

One of the most poignant moments is the beautiful tribute to D-Day with the photographs shown the way Burns does - in a way that gives them life - while American Anthem plays.

The War definitely gives a more in-depth look at the era than anything I can remember studying either in high school or college. It realy serves to put into perspective even to how things are today. The desperate situation of the Marines on Guadalcanal was never reported at home. Would people have thought that little island wasn't worth the horrendous conditions and the number of lives lost? If the same media coverage was given to this as is given to "wars" we fight today, would the outcome have been the same?
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Burns manages to match the stories up with footage quite well. If they are talking about a young German soldier, they manage to find a clip of a young German soldier. I can’t imagine the time, dedication, and research that went into all of this. With seven parts of the documentary spread out over six discs, it’s truly a marvel to think of how it all came together.

I did notice a problem with the sound on the discs. The sound would suddenly drop to a barely audible level, and then slowly come up again. This happened at various times throughout the production, with no apparent rhyme or reason. It was distracting and at times frustrating, and the only negative in a production that is giving a subject the attention it so deserves in a personal way.

In 1933, there were nine million Jews in Europe. By 1945, two out of three of them were dead.

That quote alone shows how necessary World War II was. That we were as close to defeat as we were at times and managed to turn it around is a tribute to those who lived through it and fought together - at home and on the battlefield. The country never came together in such a way before or since. This should be required viewing in high school as I never saw or learned anything close to what I learned here.


Disc One: A NECESSARY WAR December 1941 - 1942
Disc Two: WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH January 1943 - December 1943
A DEADLY CALLING November 1943 - June 1944
Disc Three: PRIDE OF OUR NATION June 1944 - August 1944
Disc Four: FUBAR September 1944 - December 1944
Disc Five: THE GHOST FRONT December 1944 - March 1945
Disc Six: A WORLD WITHOUT WAR March 1945 - December 1945


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Making THE WAR
• Commentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
• Photo Gallery
• Biographies
• Deleted Scenes
• Additional Interviews
• Educational Resources
• Photo Credits


Other documentaries by Ken Burns:

Baseball ~ Brooklyn Bridge ~ The Civil War ~ The Congress ~ Jazz ~ Lewis & Clark ~ Mark Twain ~ The Statue of Liberty ~ Thomas Jefferson ~ The West: A Film by Stephen Ives

Documentaries by brother Ric Burns:

New York: The City and the County by Ric Burns ~ New York: The Center of the World by Ric Burns


© 2008 Patti Aliventi