the pacific

the miniseries shown in hbo is now over. many people were comparing it with previous one produced by same team, band of brothers (brb). obviously they would be disappointed.

band of brothers focuses on whole of easy company, 506th infantry regiment, 101st airborne division from low to high rank while the pacific aims on three companies of marine corps in pacific theatre with three enlisted corpsmen as the core characters serving in different companies. the front line time is different for two groups. brb only has a timeframe of around an year and at that time germans were falling already after failure of african & russian campaign. but corps fought for nearly three years and their enemy, japs, were becoming stronger and stronger after each battle. so the storyline of the pacific is relatively dull at the beginning and cannot show the big picture of front line. writers already used other methods to make the story hot, from censored screens, to language.

In guadalcanal, japs were just like enemies in electronic games, rushing to death with no means, since they had got the land easily. so what americans could do were just getting enough ammo & rifles to kill them. that’s why john basilone became hero & famous. just thought there would not be good results between corps and girls in melbourne since servicemen didn’t stay forever, but at least one pair can have a happy ending.

cape gloucester was a mess to the corps due to the environment, where they faced more in iwo jima & okinawa, making many with metal problems. so retreatment is a focal point of the episode. in peleliu, they finally faced the well prepared japs while two of main characters finally met each other. you can say that quality of those two episodes can be comparable to that in brb. but in history both cape & peleliu may not be so important for the campaign.

too little front line actions were shown for iwo jima in order to end the line of john basilone, and other two were not fighting there. iwo jima actually is very important for the corps, what people remember the corps action in wwii are mainly due to that battle. they should try to put a bit more on that.

land at okinawa really shows the bad side of japs like terrorists nowadays. using citizens as a weapon, they hurt a lot of troops even making corps friendly fired before japs were eliminated . newbie made the move even harder, they were not smart & tough when compared to those fought before.

why are nowadays veterans discharged easily misbehaving and becoming a threat to others? seems uniforms are no longer as respectful as before. after wwii, servicemen can wear uniforms in the street without any discrimination at all. of course every one thought they are saving the country but not serving for a person only. and life is not so tough that they can have enough time to take recovery from the effect of war. nowadays people just rush and rush, no one can have a rest. soldiers discharged from front line actually need a lot of relieve before back to society.

p.s. richard winters should be worth for medal of honor.