MovieChat Forums > The War (2007) Discussion > eye Opening moments... anyone?

eye Opening moments... anyone?


As a child of the 90's its hard for me to understand the shear scale of racial segregation and tensions back then. I already knew some about American's own Japanese Concentration camps but never had I seen just how badly we became as Americans. Thank you ken burns for opening my eyes to a time period i never was part of.

Anyone else have eye opening moments during the series so far? and please don't respond " yeh when i changed the channel or turned off this crap"
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thanks

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I love history and most of the things in this documentary are old hat.

What was new to me is that General MacArthur had 10 hours warning that we were at war with Japan and did nothing to protect his airplanes at the Phillipines.

The Japanese were able to defeat the American forces there rather easily.

The Navy and Army commanders at Pearl Harbor had their careers ruined by their failure to plan for a surprise attack.

MacArthur paid no price for his failure. In fact, he bacame somewhat of a hero similar to General Patton and was even given the job of Governor General of Japan after the war ended.

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So many.
1) saving the cooking grease and taking back to the butcher to be used for munitions.

2) recycling on a scale we can only admire but not come close to today.

3) black workers refused ferry passage to the island war factory, swimming to work. Basically all the stories of "second class citizens" who were First Class Americans.

4) The stars blue and gold in windows I knew about. But the concern and support by others for those who lost sons and husbands was very gratifing to see.



6) how this has and will open the tightlipped people who were there. Heard more this week about it from my 88 yr old dad than in my previous 50 years. Better yet, I'm spending three full days with him next week I can't wait.

"Meet the new boss, just the same as the old boss" from the Who's "Wont Get Fooled Again"

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I did not realize that we on the homefront knew about D-Day and were listening for news as it happened. I cant imagine having a son or husband over there and having to sit and listen to a radio and wonder what was happening to them.

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1). The bodies of dead soldiers washing up on Omaha Beach 10 days after the battle and nobody was there to bury them. The airplane pilots tried but had mixed results.

2). The images of dead cows and horses. For some reason it struck me hard. I guess I expected the human suffering, even the innocent children, but not the animals.

3). The poor decision by General Bradley to take Omaha Beach at all costs from the front. It reminded me of General Picketts charge in the Civil War.

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My grandfather was in the Philippines in November 1941. He always said the soldiers there knew Japan was going to attack...Hawaii, Philippines, or somewhere else. They knew something was coming.

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My grandfather as well. He detailed his experience in a test script for the tv series "Silent Service".

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Thank god for television or you wouldn't know anything. Don't you go to school?

BTW - they weren't "concentration camps" - those were in Germany. Switch from MTV to the History Channel or Discovery for more details.

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ones terrorist is anothers freedom fighter, ones internmentment camp is anothers concentration camp. Call it what like ,but if it smells like a concentration camp and it looks like a contration camp and people are treated in some instances like a concentration camp, then rocky its a .......

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Oh, right - I forgot about the gas chambers in the Japanese internment camps; and the ovens. The starving people stacked like cord wood in barracks. The gruesome experiments performed on live prisoners.

Man, if you can't tell the difference between a German concentration camp and an internment camp in the US desert - then you need to get educated.

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can we agree that there were some concentration camps that were harsher than others , there are degrees of behavior at concentration camp, did they perform experiments at all concentration camps? the answer is no but you argue that to be considered a concentration camp there had to be experiments on people, read your answer, and if no experiment = no concentration camp . tell that to the people who were in concentration camps in europe where no experiments took place. Rocky I agree that they may not have been as harsh as some of the nazi concentration camp , but it was a concentration camp nonetheless, some federal jails are called club fed but they are nonetheless a jail. For instance a jail in thialand or a jail in mexico are brutal, so does that mean those in jail here where there is less brutality not in jail?

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[deleted]

Oh, please - don't quote dictionary references to me. I understand language usage very well, and the meaning of words. "Meaning" is not always the dictionary definition.

If someone came up to you and said they were a WWII concentration camp survivor - you wouldn't ask them: Oh, one in Germany or one in Nevada? You'd know what they meant.

Language can be used to clarify or to obfuscate - or confuse. You call an internment camp a concentration camp and you give the place a new meaning. It's a common ploy of the dishonest.

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what else can we say peter, you show rocky in black and white the defination and instead of offering some educated references why interment is not a concentration camp he just says well the dictionary is wrong, the dictionary is being dishonest , Rocky I don't say this lightly but you and your explaination is laughable, and you were telling me to get educated? hahahahahahahahaha

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The irony of your dictionary-defending response - riddled with spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes, is priceless.

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[deleted]

I agree rocky my answer was riddled w/ typos, I thiink is was b/c your rebuttle was so ignorant I couldn't stop laughing long enough to get it right.

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Wow, there was a lot during this...a new plane being rolled off the line every 63 minutes, grease being used for ammunition, and just about every way the homefront contributed to the war. Babe Ciarlo's story, the grim letters of Eugene Sledge, the snow melting in the forest to reveal bodies and body parts everywhere, pilots being told to write their wills before going off to battle, pilots having to pick up their frozen blood off the floor, the images of Nazi concentration camps, the sailors stranded at sea for days being eaten by sharks, the amazing story of Joseph Medicine Crow...yeah, I could go on.

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Language can be used to clarify or to obfuscate - or confuse. You call an internment camp a concentration camp and you give the place a new meaning. It's a common ploy of the dishonest"

YES fully agree, language can be used to clarify and inform, or it can be used to mislead and confuse. Calling the Japanese "internment camps" by the term "concentration camps" is at best misleading, and at worst, deliberately dishonest. The English language is fluid, the term concentration camp has come to mean not just mass confinement, but also torture, starvation, cruel and unusual punishment, and large scale murder/death, ala Nazi Germany. The Japanese internment camps on the west coast of the USA, do not fall into that criteria.

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Rocky, The documentary referred to the Japanese camps as "concentration camps." I encourage you to go back and watch it again. You may pick up on some things you missed. Cheers.

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I do think to many try to equate interment camps with concentration camps. Interment camps were just not the same. Nearly everyone had a bed. Yeah a straw stuffed mattrues, but mostly their own bed. Even POW camps rarely were so bad that they more than doubled up. Yep a 50-50 chance of survial.

But the concentration camps were much different. Thousnds were stuffed into building designed for a hundred. Four or more to a bed, and overlapping or even on top of each other on the floor. That was why they were known as concentration camps. That the chance of survival was 0.05% (ie 1 in 50,000) or so. Probably more Jews just died of malnutrition, disease and even suffocation, in the camps than were shot, poisoned or burned alive.

Internment camps took away rights, POW camps were horrible and greusome. but concentration camps were a killing machine. Yes virginia there is a difference.

"Meet the new boss, just the same as the old boss" from the Who's "Wont Get Fooled Again"

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The Marine digging gold out of a Japanese soldier's teeth with his bayonet while the Japanese soldier was still alive.

The lieutenant ordering his men to shoot Germans who'd already surrendered.

I'm not passing judgement on American soldiers; I understand it was war and our soldiers were meeting savagery with savagery.

The My Lai massacre in Vietnam was the first time I'd heard of such things; I now realize WWII probably had more than it's share of My Lai incidents.

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The death toll that occurred during the 2 1/2 month battle for Okinawa. I've watched a ton of WW II documentaries, but I never knew that so many people, both military and civilians died during this part of the conflict (12,000 - 19,000 U.S. casualties, 80,000 - 100,000 civilians killed). In this day and age, it's nearly impossible to fathom such mayhem.

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Upon returning to America soldiers would grab and kiss strange women in public and it was something to be laughed about and enjoyed. No sexual assault or harrassment suits as would be the case today.

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...what you saw were not "returning soldiers"...it was civilians and stateside military personnel, celebrating America's victory over Germany and Japan, and the war's end. Some of this 1945 footage was from V-E Day in May, and shot mostly in Manhattan.

The rest of it was mostly from V-J Day, the following summer (in August, 1945). It was mostly filmed in the big cities...New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington.

You'll never see anything like that "in public" again...unless one of your city's sports teams wins the World Series or the Super Bowl.



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I never knew about the battles of Peleliu and how hard fought it was. Or The irregular mountain men that helped take back the Alieutian islands.

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rhollingsworth said:

"That was the nature of the view in 1941, and there was evidence to support that view that was not based on racism toward the Japanese. You just don't hear that side much because that is not the politically correct line."

I'd be interested in learning more about this evidence. This is the first I've heard of it. Can you offer sources?


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The family in the Internment camp in Manilla and the grandfather who told them to stay and not come back to the US. Haunts me still.

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

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"That was the nature of the view in 1941, and there was evidence to support that view that was not based on racism toward the Japanese. You just don't hear that side much because that is not the politically correct line."

I'd be interested in learning more about this evidence. This is the first I've heard of it. Can you offer sources?
He won't because he's absolutely full of it. How do I know? Two reasons:

1. It's been more than three years since he posted that, and more than two years since you asked him to back it up. One might imagine that if his viewpoint were legitimate, he would have at least pointed you in the right direction in his initial post. Perhaps he is afraid to cite his source, knowing that it would elicit a hostile response. One recent book that argues in favor of Japanese internment was Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror, which has been rebutted and dismissed for its lack of objectivity and fairness. (http://reason.com/archives/2004/12/01/indefensible-internment and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Internment#Response_to_In_D efense_of_Internment)

2. He holds up political correctness as the reason his argument gets dismissed. Attacking political correctness is the straw man tactic of the ignorant. It's designed to shut down any discussion. Do a word search on Political Correctness, and you'll find that it's cited almost exclusively by neo-con douchebags as the reason for any number of society's ills.

Racism = Countless acts of terror, murder, and violence. Systemic denial of freedom and civil rights.

Political Correctness = A mild inconvenience to ignorant morons.

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Reply noted - thanks for the link.

It's nice to have an online conversation with someone who can be polite and back up their assertions!

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Not really something new in so far as hearing about deaths, but Quentin Aanensen's letter that he never sent to Jackie was the one original personal experience that hit me the hardest.

How many hundreds of thousands if not millions carried those types of scars to their graves is known to no one.



Pleasuring a man with a socked foot one time does not make a person gay - Peter Griffin

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Simply one of the greatest WWII documentaries ever created. I have seen it multiple times, EXTREMELY informative, and quite entertaining at the same time. Wonderful. Should be shown in all history classes across the nation.

And I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone, yes I'll be leaving in the fall

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