The War

Ken Burns has done it again!

He has made documentaries about Jazz, Baseball and The War Between the States, but THE WAR is his crowning achievement!

There are literally thousands of stories that could be told about the events and the people of WWII, but Burns had to limit THE WAR's perspective to 4 towns and their people with their heartbreaks and celebrations.

This film expertly displays the timeline of events that were taking place all over the world with a war that was fought simultaneously in the Pacific and in Europe.

My father was in the South Pacific and served in the U.S. Navy and he often told his family about his experiences. He drove landing crafts during the invasion of Okinawa but he never stated much more than that fact. What I learned from THE WAR is that the invasion of Okinawa was the largest invasion of the war and that thousands of Americans died there. Okinawa was to be the last bastion for the Japanese because the next step was the invasion of Japan itself. In fact, the entire invasion force went ashore without a single shot being fired, BUT, they were told that military intelligence informed that Okinawa was heavily fortified and that less than 20% of our soldiers would make it off the beach. My father heard this warning and he drove the landing craft anyway. Big Ed was never afraid of anything and now I understand why! A few days after the landing all hell broke loose on this island.

If you have a relative who is a member of this Greatest Generation, you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary. I can promise that you will get a much greater understanding of what took place and why it had to happen.

It was shown in seven episodes and the total time is about 15 hours. Check it out at www.pbs.org.