I hope that :O: means that your suggestion was a joke, because that movie certainly was.

Yes and yes. Didn't like it much.


Half of my family are smartasses, btw. ;)

I think you're mixing small scale and large scale considerations, subnuts, and your confusion is the result. A single person can be brave/heroic/whatever in the smallest of conflicts. The size of the conflict overall has no bearing on the merits of the individuals involved.

As for the PT being "boring" I couldn't comment.

As for it being a "side show", by which I assume you mean small scale, it is a fact that the Germans and Russians each lost more men in a single battle than the US lost in the whole war.

The US Navy specifically lost 62,000 men in WW2 (I'm not sure what that translates to in numbers of ships) where as the British Commonwealth naval forces lost more than half a million. No matter which way you look at it, the Pacific War was small-scale compared to everything else that went on.

I think your POV is being coloured by your personal ties to people that served.

Over here in Europe and Germany it maybe is just natural that the war in Europe gets more covarage, than the Pacific. However, there are TV programs on the Pacific war, too - just not as many, but also not rare. However, myself never thought of it as a less violent or less important war - only as a "different" kind of war involving more water :) , which began later and all in all did not last as long as the war around and finally in Germany.I would estimate that of the European theatre, the fighting in Russia and the way to power by hitler and finally the Holocaust get covered most.

Letters was brilliant. It's companion film was also very good, but this one is one of the all-time great films set in World War II.

One of my favourite war films of all times, probably.

Small scale? The Pacific Theater covered an era several times greater than that covered by the European theater. It saw just as many people die, especially in China, which lost the most people of any country in the war. It eventually included all of the major Allied powers fighting, saw some of the largest naval battles in history and one of the largest land offensives ever conducted. I hardly think the scale was small compared to anything in the ETO.

I think you are talking about the scale of individual battles whereas I am talking about the scale of the whole thing. Also, I'm not sure what the area covered has to do with anything? If two men fought mono e mono in the Sahara, would that count as a large scale conflict?

I am talking about the whole thing. The land battles in the ETO were generally larger than those in the PTO (With a few notable exceptions), but when one combines the scale of forces involved and casualties suffered on the PTO it is quite clearly not "small scale" compared to the ETO.

I had to think about this one for a while, but I have ultimately decided to support August and OLCs view of the situation. As a whole, the Pacific Theatre of Operations, while very large geographically, was primarily a low-intensity conflict punctuated by brief but bloody naval/amphibious clashes. I'm not saying that the fighting wasn't hard or important or anything like that, but when one looks at the resource gap between axis and allied forces, the result was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
The Chinese side of the conflict is different, but ultimately boils down to a slow-paced eight-year slugging match between Japan and the Chinese tar baby.

Where I would consider the PTO to be a real sideshow is in the arena of international politics. FDR tried very hard to force Japan into a war, and thus get the US into the larger conflict by refusing any diplomatic compromises the Japanese offered. What he really wanted was to get into the war in Europe, of course.

I'm also inclined to believe at least some revisionist history because the popular history is so heavily colored by the propaganda needed to rouse people to war for reasons other than the real ones most of the time. Much of it hangs on for generations after the war, though I believe that trend will change (and has been changing) as global communications become more and more accessible.

I am not as knowledgeable about the Pacific Theatre as I am about the European Theatre, and indeed even within the European theatre I know more about the West Europe war than I do the Eastern one. I think geography comes into it, as well as nationality. I am British, therefore I know more about the war that was at our doorstep than on the other side of the world.
However, over the years I have sought to learn what I can.
I like anime and manga, but Japan does scare me sometimes...particularly the attitude the Imperial Japanese Military had towards its enemies, it was perhaps the closest to total war in the Second World War and it was total war from the start, not after a period of push-backs and retreat. The Japanese gave no quarter, and what prisoners they did accept were...well, made to regret becoming prisoners. :nope:
However, I do respect and like some Japanese...Yamamoto in particular stands high and above the entire Japanese military to me. Heh, in fact the Japanese sections in Pearl Harbour were my favourite parts in the whole damn film. :haha:

It's a hard thing to say, really, I don't think it's revisionist, after all even the European theatre has its forgotten wars...not many people in the UK could tell you about the Battle of Italy, the bloody fights at Monte Cassino. I suspect that the same holds true in the US...however everyone knows Pearl Harbour on both sides of the Atlantic.

Japans revision does concern me though, concern me and make me very angry indeed...but...this is not part of this thread...so I will not unload here lest I find myself in the same position as Ducimus.

Another forgotten war in the UK is the Malayan 'emergency' (it was called a emergency rather than a war so that Lloyds insurers would still pay out to the rubber plantations and tin mines), heck I wouldn't have known about it if I didn't have a family member who was involved in it.

No war...no battle...no conflict that men, women and children fought and died in should be forgotten...but alas, with human nature there are so many of them that to recall all would be nigh impossible. :nope:

There are many, I recommend:

"With The Marines at Tarawa" (Documentary)

"From here to eternity"

"Bridge on the River Kwai"

"The Naked and the Dead"

"Father Goose"

"King Rat"

"Bah, Bah, Black Sheep"(TV)

"Empire of the Sun"

"Paradise Road"

"The Thin Red Line"

"HBO's The Pacific"(TV)

A good series about the Pacific theatre but not technically about the actual fighting per se is Tenko.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenko_%28TV_series%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQtVy...eature=related

Worth a look, it's very well made and well acted.

I highly recommend the book that the movie was based on as well.
"So Sad to Fall in Battle" by Kumiko Kakehashi. :yeah:

It puts quite a human face on what is usually a enemy portrayed as a fanatical weapon based on so much propaganda.
The movie does a good job as making the Japanese soldier human as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Sad-Fall-Battl...9113299&sr=1-1

:)

These two are very underappreciated films compared to their quality. I hadn't even heard of the latter before seeing it in a discount dvd-bin, and it turned out to be pretty good.

To add to the list:
Yamato(2005)
A Japanese film that concentrates on a handful of crewmembers on the battleship Yamato and the ships demise in the naval kamikaze operation "Ten-Go". Dramatized for sure, but generally a very well made movie and a refreshing change compared to the usual Hollywood point of view.

I remember when this "premiered" on network television here. We watched it. I was a kid so my understanding was limited in some aspects, altho I certainly knew about Pearl Harbor and that it's what got the US officially into the war. Have seen it in bits and pieces since, probably need to rent it and watch all the way through again.

My main recollection of this movie is the reaction of one of the Japanese admirals (Yamamoto?) when he finds out that they attacked without their political/diplomatic emissaries having delivered some kind of ultimatum or statement of intent or whatever to the appropriate US officials at the appointed time way far away in Washington DC. Don't know how historically accurate that is, or if I misunderstood what was happening. But it gave me a sad feeling of "well the politicians *******ed things up and now the guys in uniform - on both sides - are gonna have to pay the price."

Have heard of the first one but not seen it as far as I remember. Not familiar at all with the latter two.

Have seen the latter, not the former. It's in my Netflix queue somewhere.

Tried to watch this one a couple times but as is sometimes the case with his movies I just couldn't get past Charlton Heston, who I can really only stand to watch when the scenery chewing is kept to a minimum and/or the quality of the "product" overall is much higher. Sadly, not the case here for me, since IMO what I saw of the film seemed very cliched and formulaic. Also, if Hollywood wants to make a movie about the PTO and have me connect primarily with the stock American "good guys," they need to not put Toshiro Mifune in charge of the Imperial Japanese Navy. :O:

I believe The Thin Red Line is about Guadalcanal? Which I did not realize or remember until I was moving it up to the top of my queue after some high praise of it in another thread here. For some reason I thought it was about 'Nam. I have it at home now but due to its length probably won't be able to watch it until the weekend.

Part of it for me is that I'm not a "war movie" fan, generally speaking, meaning it's a genre that doesn't typically appeal to me, like say sci-fi. I'll forgive a lot in a sci-fi film if the "concept" or the effects are entertaining enough. But I'm not likely to sit through a war picture "just because" - it usually has to be either so well made that its appeal transcends any question of genre, or have some element of it that appeals to me personally at the moment even if it's not a five-star product.

The PTO has always been viewed as a sideshow or secondary theater. There are many reasons for this. Most european countries had no interest or troops in the conflict. It really only interests the USA and Japan.

During the war, the coverage was limited. Nothing came out of Japan. The US had most of its troops/resources put into defeating Germany first and this was viewed as the main front.

Unlike the German propaganda machine which trumpeted German triumphs and turned Prien and Rommel into household names even in the UK, the US kept a tight lid on information. Submarine operations in the Pacific received no reporting at all. News was heavily filtered. For example, the news of the Battle of Savo Island in early august 42 (an Allied defeat) was not released until mid-october 42 when they could announce the victory at Cape Esperance at the same time.

Japan, unlike Germany, has still not totally admitted or faced its role in WW2. The Japanese have managed to portray the myth that they fought a tough, but clean war, even though they murdered more civilians in Asia than the Nazis did in Europe.

Of course, the lack of coverage or interest is nothing new. Entire wars receive little or no coverage compared to WW2 (Korea, Vietnam, Middle east wars). Even within WW2, you have different level of interests: ETO is more popular than PTO; Land war is more popular than Naval or Air War; Within ETO land war, NWE 44-45 tends to suck up all the oxygen.

Off the top of my head Britain, France, the Netherlands and the USSR all participated in that conflict.

ok, minor interest. Britain adopted a wholly defensive attitude until 1944 leaving the heavy lifting to the Americans. The Russians did not declare war until august 6, 1945. The French (Vichy) collaborated with the Japanese until early 45, not something they like to remember. The Dutch did fight hard to defend Indonesia in early 42, but were overwhelmed.

How could I forget one of my all-time favorites? :damn:

Hell In The Pacific. Stupid title, great movie with two great actors (and only those two). Not really about the war, but a drama about two opposing warriors trapped together (and yes, Enemy Mine was a terrible rip-off). If you should see this one, watch it with the subtitles OFF. It didn't have subtitles in the theater, and it really makes a difference. I will admit that I keep them on now, because what Mifune is saying is kind of fun.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063056/

Midway is one of my least favorite movies, precisely for the reasons you mentioned. I prefer movies about real events over the usual 'war' movie. Midway would have been much better if it had been done Tora Tora Tora-style.

Wholly defensive? Well what about Orde Wingate and the Chindits?

As for the rest:
The Japanese and Soviets first fought each other way back July 0f 1938.

Several of the French colonies in the pacific sided with the Free French instead of the Vichy. As a matter of fact despite being nominally on the Axis' side, fighting between the Vichy French and Japanese still broke out in Sept of 1940 when the Japanese violated the terms of their agreement over the occupation of French Indochina.

As for the Dutch, they might have been overwhelmed but they still participated too.