The first installment of Ken burns WAR (ww2) has come and gone. Now I know where Guadalcanal (sp?) is located. Not so far from Australia, just North of the equator. The Japs (allowable expression in talk about WW2; you know, Pearl Harbor n' stuff. Now, it's our honorable friend and ally Japan. You still haven't seen Sayonara? Japan helped us a great deal handle the war in Korea. I went on R&R to Japan from South Korea; that was background to a terrific, cross cultural love story with Marlon Brando making some fans and some money.) Ken Burns lays it on the line about the WW2 sub-human, or, oh so human, Jap ferocity in the Pacific, and in China, and in the Philippines. I didn't know about the baking and eating babies, but I did know, from my Mother-In-Law, about the catching of Philippine babies with a bayonet. When a child she spied from cover terrified for her life. Thanks to America, The Japanese didn't set foot in Australia. They did enter Sydney Harbor in a mini-submarine; they sank a ferry in mothballs that had no engine.
The air war over Europe is a subject I look forward to hearing and seeing on the continuations of Ken Burns' documentary. I'm anxious to see if he takes a position on the brainwashing of American flyers to get them to enthusiastically fly into devastating attack over Germany. "Here's a new wrinkle," says the RAF dispacher to American bomber crews en route to Germany: "Their pilots are ordered to ram your aircraft if necessary." From: The Daryl Zanuch movie about "Daylight precision bombing."
to be continued..............
2 comments:
I haven't viewed the Burns documentary but I have recorded it and plan to watch all episodes. Sounds as if it got off to a rousing start. I have indeed seen the film Sayonara. I cry every time that I watch it. I loved the Brando storyline but even more moving was the relationship between actor Red Buttons and an Asian actress whose name I don't recall. She had the most beautiful eyes, full of calm kindness.--Sheria
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