Let me try it a different way-

Hmmm, the only thing I don't hope they do is leave out all the racist stuff during the war.

The Japanese really were the other, villified to the extreme. We didn't round up ethnic Germans and put them in camps, after all.

Then again, the Germans never published an order saying it was a-okay to kill and eat prisoners....whether or not rations were available. Though recinded, it was a practice that went on right until the day of surrender.

At any rate, the propaganda was swallowed whole in large measures, as there was little to refute it. The Japanese rarely took prisoners, and when they did abused them terribly. They refused to surrender. They were fanatical, and it was a rare soul that took any sort of pity on them. One respected (in the cautious way) and even feared the Japanese soldier, but relate to them? Not a chance.

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Maybe they'll go the other way. The "they're people, too" first reflection being discarded. Marines did not hesitate to send lit jellied fuel into bunkers, no matter how many times the inhabitants screamed as they burned alive; on the contrary, they were greatful that the man-packed flame thrower had been invented.

for a very good appraisal of the last year of the war-go and buy and read of course "Nemesis" by Max Hastings!
one of the best history books I have ever read!!!!

oh, and I downloaded the first ep and am looking forward to watching it-thanks for the first mini reviews

BL

I would also like to note to those of you who are planning on buying the DVD when it comes out, if you have a blu-ray player, buy the blu-ray version. I watched it in HD last night and it was beautiful.

Interesting about the racist stuff. You do know that the Japanese were more racist than their enemies. Even modern Japan is more racist.

An US/UK prisoner had about a 5% chance of dying in a German POW camp. The rate for those held in Japanese POW camps was about 40% with the survivors being not far from it and having injuries and health issues for the rest of their lives.

My response would be what I posted in this thread.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2926148/1.html

Read about the Christmas presents and later about the frog collector. I'm not sure about your cliche comments.

I'm compiling an exhibit from a local 2nd Marine Lt. who took part in Guadalcanal, we have his footlocker and all its contents which includes pictures of a Japanese boy and Japanese soldiers (holding guns). I'm pretty sure Lt. "Bevo" took these as keepsakes.

Much enjoyed this first episode, I thought it hit the right tone.

I don't understand criticism of the episode for...

I think it's pretty cliche- yes, of course, this does happen and can happen, my problem is the stylized drama thrown into less than an hour of each episode, like trying to wrap up every emotion, every philosophical argument ever written about war in 45 minutes. It can tend to forgo the documentary style in favor of a pedantic, anti-war artsy style; from an artistic and even realistic and gritty point of view, I think that gritty anti-war films probably make the best war films, since the rest are just pompous, bombastic, heroic, clinical and unrealistic. But there has to be a catch- for every time there was some personal epiphany here when collecting personal keepsakes and tokens of humanity, there are a million more times to 'reflect' on malaria, jungle rot, hunger, exhaustion, diarrhea, festering, septic wounds, fear, hate, that time honored tradition of taking ears and noses as trophies and so on- I want to see whether the balance is going to remain in the stylized tragedy, or go for more existentialism- really, that it's too absurd, too quick, to tedious, too tiresome, to reflect on until maybe later when it's over, since the absurd becomes all very common. Dialogue can do this as well- conversations are long winded, sound scripted, overblown, overly formal, not a normal conversational way people talk but delivering a monologue. War films often have ways of portending speech so as to point out the obvious- "Sarge! They're flanking us! Crap! And Johnson is hit!", or so as to explain things to the audience, as if there was an audience in the story with the characters, since again, it has to tell a story in only so much time and has to convey certain knowledge in a way that people normally don't talk, like bothering to explain esoteric jargon, military acronyms, operational level details passed on among the squad to cue the audience, and so on. World War II is not the same animal as some of the dust ups in the last 20 years or so. You had a clash of totalitarian systems and opposition of ideologies, irrational, uncompromising race theories, mixed in with modern, efficient, mechanized forms of warfare. This human stuff was balanced really quick with a lot of penchant for brutality.

So far it has lived up to my expectations...

I missed about the first 20 minutes of it - and not knowing where they were or in what stage of the war the story was picking up on, I was able to discern that it was Guadalcanal. I knew for sure after the Naval clash, and when they starting digging in around that inlet to prepare for the Japanese flanking maneuver, it dawned on me that I had played a similar scenario with Steel Panthers World at War game some years ago. I was intrigued at how similar the game layout was to the to the movie scene.

I also noticed that they've consulted some books on the matter, namely Helmet for My Pillow.