User reviews

The general outline of the war in the Pacific is probably well known. Admiral Nimitz, the American in charge of the naval forces, wanted to hop across the central Pacific, island to island, towards Japan. General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of the armies, preferred to slog his way up the larger islands from south to north and in the process liberating the Phillipine Islanders to whom he had made the famous promise, "I shall return."

President Roosevelt greenlighted both strategies. Both involved brutal fighting against a skilled and determined enemy but MacArthur's proved the less necessary. He liberated the islands but provoked the Japanese troops into a reckless slaughter of tens of thousands of Phillipine civilians and the destruction of most of Manila, formerly "the pearl of the orient." The documentary skips Guadalcanal for some reason and begins with the landings at Tarawa but makes up for it by limning in the U. S. Army's fighting inland on the Phillipines. It's not something we hear much about.

Later, we learn more than we might have expected about the seesaw battles across Burma. The narration is particularly candid. Halsey WAS lured away from Leyte Gulf -- period, no beating around the bush. The famous Chindits proved no more than a nuisance to the Japanese troops in Burma and they didn't withdraw. They were systematically hunted down and many were lost to enemy action and disease.

The editing is careless, maybe necessarily so. The burning and exploding U.S.S. Frnklin stands in for a Japanese aircraft carrier. At other times the narration is discordant with the images on screen.

Those weaknesses notwithstanding, the program bears watching, if only because the events shown are so quickly disappearing down the rabbit hole.