Purgatory
- Episode aired 2001
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From Worse to Worse.
This episode covers most of 1942, including battles at Midway, Guadalcanal, and the Kokoda Trail across the Owen Stanley Mountains in New Guinea.
The approach continues to be even handed. Almost as many Japanese participants, military and civilian, are interviewed, including a Zero pilot. I'm surprised that so many were willing to describe their acts.
The Doolittle Raid on Japan early in 1942 -- sixteen carrier-borne medium bombers doing little damage but providing the Allies with considerable uplift in morale, is described. An above-average feature film was produced, describing the attack, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo."
All the airplanes were lost, but most of the men reached friendly lines with the help of the Chinese. Several of our fliers were executed for war crimes. Another feature film, mostly fiction, was made of the trial -- "Purple Heart." We hear much less about the retribution of the Japanese occupiers, who burned Chinese villages and killed more than 100,000 Chinese citizens who were assumed to have helped our aviators.
American audiences don't hear much about the Kokoda trail either, which must qualify as having taken place among the most brutal ecological circumstances one can imagine. Another film, "Kokoda", gives a realistic description of the conditions. It was a hellish experience in which Australian militia finally stopped the Japanese in their drive south across New Guinea.
We rarely hear much about the condition of the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal either. It's as if we had a difficult time with supplies and the Japanese did not. On the contrary, most of the enemy troops died from exhaustion, starvation, and illness, not from battle wounds. The surviving troops were successfully withdrawn in secret.
Several hundred Allied prisoners, half British, half American, were sent to Burma to work on 250 miles of railroad. I'll recommend another feature film, "The Bridge on the River Kwai." A minor weakness shows up in this episode, as it did in the first. In my opinion the camera lingers too long on the subject when he chokes up and begins to weep. The excess of sentiment isn't really necessary. The stories themselves get the job done.
The approach continues to be even handed. Almost as many Japanese participants, military and civilian, are interviewed, including a Zero pilot. I'm surprised that so many were willing to describe their acts.
The Doolittle Raid on Japan early in 1942 -- sixteen carrier-borne medium bombers doing little damage but providing the Allies with considerable uplift in morale, is described. An above-average feature film was produced, describing the attack, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo."
All the airplanes were lost, but most of the men reached friendly lines with the help of the Chinese. Several of our fliers were executed for war crimes. Another feature film, mostly fiction, was made of the trial -- "Purple Heart." We hear much less about the retribution of the Japanese occupiers, who burned Chinese villages and killed more than 100,000 Chinese citizens who were assumed to have helped our aviators.
American audiences don't hear much about the Kokoda trail either, which must qualify as having taken place among the most brutal ecological circumstances one can imagine. Another film, "Kokoda", gives a realistic description of the conditions. It was a hellish experience in which Australian militia finally stopped the Japanese in their drive south across New Guinea.
We rarely hear much about the condition of the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal either. It's as if we had a difficult time with supplies and the Japanese did not. On the contrary, most of the enemy troops died from exhaustion, starvation, and illness, not from battle wounds. The surviving troops were successfully withdrawn in secret.
Several hundred Allied prisoners, half British, half American, were sent to Burma to work on 250 miles of railroad. I'll recommend another feature film, "The Bridge on the River Kwai." A minor weakness shows up in this episode, as it did in the first. In my opinion the camera lingers too long on the subject when he chokes up and begins to weep. The excess of sentiment isn't really necessary. The stories themselves get the job done.
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- rmax304823
- May 23, 2015
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