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HBO's 'The Pacific': About as Real as Hell on Screen Can GetBy Gene Santoro | World War II | Single Page | 10 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post  Photo courtesy of HBO THE PACIFIC On Peleliu, during one of the bloodiest and arguably most pointless battles of World War II, Alabama-born Eugene Sledge, a.k.a. Sledgehammer, and his Louisiana pal Shelton, a.k.a. Snafu, share a brief respite. Inside a bunker whose roof and walls have been mostly blown off are two dead Japanese. One is bullet-riddled and leaning up against the wall whose opposite side Sledge squats wearily next to. The other has his skull top sliced neatly off, revealing a bloody puddle within. Above him perches Snafu, who scoops up pebbles and drops them metronomically, almost absent-mindedly, into the open brain pan—PLUNK, PLUNK, PLUNK. Subscribe Today
Between inevitable eruptions of rage and terror on war's front lines, numbness is all. The two marines are mostly silent. Finally Sledge, reacting to the repeated PLUNK, hauls himself up, unsheathes his knife, clambers around what's left of the wall dividing him from the intact dead Japanese. He's about to dig out the corpse's gold teeth, as he's seen others, including Snafu, do. Then Snafu drawls softly but imperiously, "You don't wanna do that, Sledgehammer." The verbal jockeying is a seesawing stalemate till Snafu says, almost gently, "You a doctor's son, right? Medics say these Japs got weird germs, get to ya after they're dead. You don't wanna do that, do ya?" That lets Sledge retarget his rage: "All right with you if I take this insignia, then?" "Oh, yeah," Snafu is pure nonchalance now. "Insignia got no germs." A surreal pact between foxhole buddies: Snafu helps Sledge hang on to a tattered piece of his prewar humanity in one of the most forsaken places war has ever seen. At its best, The Pacific, the 10-episode HBO miniseries, captures the myriad realities of what hell does to its inhabitants—including moments of redemption. In that and other ways, it's a more tightly focused Band of Brothers, moved halfway around the globe. Three marines—Sledge, John Basilone, and Robert Leckie, real men who fought in the Pacific theater—are the miniseries' main characters. Their individual stories intertwine to provide narrative continuity, but are divergent enough to offer historically accurate and dramatically effective angles on ground-level aspects of the Pacific war, from Guadalcanal through Okinawa. Leaving his large, boisterous Italian family after their 1941 holiday dinner, John Basilone (Jon Seda) earns a Medal of Honor for his outsized heroics after the deceptively easy landing on Guadalcanal. He becomes the Corps' first and, at this dark hour, badly needed, hero, embraced by a reeling America: he muscles a heavy machine gun with his bare hands while he charges around raking flocks of enemy troops. In Australia for R and R, he nearly pukes on the award letter Col. Lewis "Chesty" Puller shows him. Puller persuades him to go back home for a Hollywood starlet–studded bond drive tour: "You know what we need out here, and it all costs money." Basilone does his duty—staying in hotels' presidential suites, bedding starlets, appearing on radio and at Radio City Music Hall. Finally, he can't take it. So he bails out to train new boots at Camp Pendleton, finds love and gets married, and reups for another hitch so he can go with his company to Iwo Jima. Bob Leckie (James Badge Dale) gets blooded on Guadalcanal as a hardened, sharp-tongued rifleman, where he and Basilone at times pass each other—first when Basilone's unit is pulled off the line and passes Leckie's, its replacement. Pages: 1 2Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: 20th - 21st Century, television, World War II
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10 Comments to “HBO's 'The Pacific': About as Real as Hell on Screen Can Get”
Hollywood, which has been selling out for decades to the most awesomely genocidal regime history has ever seen —ACROSS the
Pacific —can make all the seen-to-death WWII retreads –with all the
PC trimmings in Malibu it wants —it still AIN'T gonna' wash.
TRUTH HURTS
By unbuttoned 10 on Mar 22, 2010 at 12:28 am
It's OK, but it's Hollywood, and that means it does a lot of compromising.
For instance, tracers were removed from MG belts fairly early, but it's a lot less spectacular. Grenades are more like artillery in the movies, and nothing's different here.
The Marines are much too well fed, not yellow enough, and morale remains high, all things we know from the record are inaccurate.
No matter. It's HOLLYWOOD!
By John Beatty on Mar 22, 2010 at 4:36 pm
This review is long on summary and short on review. Not very useful–except for spoiling the plot.
By SteveD on Mar 22, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Please NOTE: When refering to a a member of the USMC (Marine) , Marine is ALWAYS capitalized !!! Semper Fi… , Thank you…RL…
By Robert on Mar 23, 2010 at 12:26 am
Crap, pure crap.
By ErikB on Mar 25, 2010 at 9:20 am
I am not a veteran of the Pacific war and this story is not my own. But it is my Dad's. He served with the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. At the battle of the Teneru, the battle shown at the end of the first episode of The Pacific, Dad led a 37 mm antitank crew that fired directly on the massed Japanese assault on Marine positions.
He would never talk about it. I understand that the men who really saw horrible things in combat seldom talked about the war. Perhaps for that reason, my Dad didn't like Sledge's book, a memoir about the 1st Marine Division battles that followed Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. I think Sledge spoke about things that most Marines kept private and wanted to forget — the absolute horror and brutality of that no-quarter war.
I am emotionally tied to these scenes in The Pacific. As far as I can tell in the first two episodes, they are accurate. And maybe, they tell part of the story that my Dad would never share. Part of what he did share is there — the Japanese shells ("sounding like freight trains coming over you") slamming into the Marine perimeter around Henderson field; the abandonment of the Marines by the American navy at Guadalcanal; eating wormy, captured Japanese rice and raw fish.
And yet, a part of the story is not there. The Marines who spent six months or more on Guadalcanal were young boys and recent civilians. They fought against the cream of theJapanese Army, which had never been defeated. A few Marines, desperately outnumbered and under supplied, and surrounded for months at a time by the Japanese navy, fought their enemy to a standstill and prevailed against him.
The true significance of their battle is hard to get across on screen, I think. But I believe The Pacific is a fitting tribute to my Dad and the thousands of Marines like him. This was their war.
By Kent Schoffstall on Mar 25, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Having made BILLIONS upon BILLIONS these past decades
catering to the franchise-slum and denial needs of history's
MOST awesomely genocidal regime —-ACROSS the Pacific
Holllywood continues to run for moral cover behind ad nauseum,
anachronistic, PC WWII retreads —–EVEN ON THIS
-the once again 'mysteriusly overlooked' 60th Anniversary
of the genuinely epic, relevant —indeed STILL unfolding
——–KOREAN WAR!
Guys! —STOP being such set-up soul saps!
In 2010 —-it's DANGEROUS!
By pg 2010 on Apr 2, 2010 at 4:02 am
My dad set foot on Peleliu shortly after D-day. His letters home were reserved. "Suffice to say that the Marines had ponchos over them and the Japs didn't." It was ugly, and sad, stuff.
I respect Mr. Hanks and his mission to tell the story, but if you have read THE book (With the Old Breed), then you know that poetic license has diminished the story a bit. READ THE BOOK! if you care about this story, READ THE BOOK. Thank you, Eugene Sledge, Sir.
BTW, Snafu did not have that conversation about dental hygiene with Sledge. As big as the budget was, you'd think they'd tell the story as it was written..
By Shelley Heard on Apr 26, 2010 at 11:09 pm
What a bunch of whiney critics. This series does a very good job of capturing the essence of the 2 books it was based upon. I've read them both several times and "The Pacific" remains faithful to them.
By juan on Apr 28, 2010 at 10:59 am
Nice of Hollywood to come up with yet another ad nauseum, done-to-death PC WWII retread -er' we mean 'tribute' —even as they rake in BILLIONS upon BILLIONS shamelessly catering to the franchise slum
denial needs of history's –MOST– awesomely genocidal regime
—ACROSS the Pacific (70 million exterminated in 'peacetime' long AFTER WWII -unoutted, unanswered for, unmentioned in ANY Hollywood film -EVER!- FACT)).
ESP. galling as millions continue to suffer and die on this, the once again 'mysteriously overlooked' 60th Anniversary of the chillingly
relevant, STILL unfolding —KOREAN WAR…
-AMEN-
By eber hart on Apr 30, 2010 at 6:02 am