The Pacific

Yeah. I ordered HBO again. Last time I did it was for Band of Brothers.

No story is without controversy, and this presentation certainly has it's share, as a result of Tom Hanks' comments in a recent Time Magazine interview with Douglas Brinkley which reek of moral equivalence and a remarkable ignorance of history, remarkable in the sense that this production required considerable study.

Victor Davis Hanson takes those on here, it's a short read and well worth your time. Among the many easily refuted points, the assertion that it was a war against a "religion and a race", stupid on its face given our past alliances with the nation of Japan, our partnership with China against the Japanese war machine, our rebuilding of Japan, our defense of Korea, Vietnam, etc.

Hanson can handle that without my feeble help.

Anyway I want to see what this thing will be, so I'll watch it and see.

A short trailer, and then couple of other thoughts about this, for whatever they're worth.

The finest Marine I ever knew, was a five foot five sweet soul of a man named "Sonny". Sonny left this world last year. It was my privilege to know him for almost 20 years.

He was the kindest man I've ever known. Loved his wife dearly, his children, and his grandchildren. And his Corps.

Sonny enlisted in the Marines when he was seventeen, after Pearl Harbor. His mother had to sign off on his underage papers.

He trained stateside, and shipped out to New Zealand in 1942, where he trained more. His first combat engagement was at Guadalcanal. Sonny fought with the 1st Marine Division, he was wounded by a grenade that left a piece of shrapnel in his eye that he carried for the rest of his life. He fought with the 1st Marines from there all the way to Ie Shima (near Okinawa).

Sonny didn't have a bitter bone in his body. Not one. I have met few men in my lifetime who endured so much, and yet carried that sense of peace.

War is all hell, someone who fought it said to teach us something. There are right lessons to learn from it, and wrong ones.

posted by Dave In Texas at 04:48 PM

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