War's lesson: no good guys
Chicago Sun-Times, Sep 23, 2007 by Doug Elfman
At Pearl Harbor, the original Ground Zero, Daniel Inouye found a woman's corpse with the head severed, her arms wrapped around a dead baby.
"This is what I had to pick up. At 17," he says.
Soon after, in Sacramento, Calif., William Perkins was drafted into a blacks-only military unit. He laughed, then served in an era when he was refused service in businesses owned by whites, on whose behalf he killed.
That was just the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II, and it is but the start of "The War," director Ken Burns' 15-hour miniseries starting tonight on PBS.
It is 6 1/2 years in the making -- a brutal look back as told through interviews with vets (some have since died), family recollections and battlefield footage.
The boys of war become the bodies of war.
Off to bloody graves they go, except for those who live to tell horror stories about how they helped save history and the future, by killing and coming home.
It is not political, pro-war or anti-war. I'll touch merely on accounts from the first, two-hour-plus installment, to let you discover much more.
One definition of being a military hero is to kill, kill, kill; another is to die. Glenn Frasier killed. He didn't want to. But he witnessed a good friend's death:
"All I ever found of him was his left foot and a shoe. And when that Japanese Zero turned his wings right above the trees and started to fly away, I could see him with a smile on his face. And at that point, I had no problem with killing people. In fact, it got to the point where I hunted them."
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One moment, you're disturbed and angry to hear personal stories of how a human (the enemy) could viciously slaughter POWs (Americans). The next, you're disturbed and angry to hear details of GIs responding in kind.
"The American bodies had been mutilated," says Sid Phillips, a Marine at Guadalcanal. "They had been mutilated and had had their genitals stuffed in their mouths. Our battalion never took a prisoner after that."
After "The War" wrapped, some groups complained that the film, at that point, shortchanged Latinos' contribution. So Burns and Lynn Novick, the co-director and co-producer, interviewed more vets.
The new footage shows Burns was right to amend. One new voice belongs to Bill Lansford from East Los Angeles (a vet of Guadalcanal's "Carlon's Raiders"). He chillingly recounts listening to nearby American POWs in agony. Out of spite, Lansford's unit began massacring captured enemies.
"We were supposed to be good guys," he says. "There were no reporters with us, so the word never got out until much later that that had happened. And some people still deny it. But I was there. And I'm telling you that we did it."
'I've killed so many men .... you never quite get over that'
During World War II, Quentin C. Aanenson got so used to the smell of rotting death that the stench began to seem "like home."
"There was decomposition of corpses and primate animals and so forth. It was close up and personal," says Aanenson, 86, one of the storytellers in Ken Burns' "The War." "You got so used to it."
The miniseries often focuses on the effect of the war on four regional towns. Aanenson grew up in the Midwestern city of Luverne, Minn. He killed many men while flying P-47 Thunderbolts into Normandy and throughout Europe.
As he does in the miniseries, he tells the Sun-Times about his mindset, then and now.
"At the time, I was doing it to save American lives," he says. "Sometimes, as recently as on the way back from that mission, I would start to feel this, 'I've killed so many men.' And that haunts you, no matter how you ..." he says, then pauses to stop tears from starting. "You never quite get over that."
I tell him it seems odd that after WW11, America was populated with vets who were, for lack of a better word, "killers."
"Yes," he says. "But we wanted to go on with our lives when we got home. So they used the term 'Reluctant Generation,' or 'Reticent Generation.' "
Aanenson went from the service to Louisiana State University, where he met his future wife and finished the college education the Depression had interrupted.
"I was in that traumatized phase where anything about the war would bring me uptight. No one would have noticed it at all. But mentally I was going through the distress of it all."
He wanted meaning in his life. So he began a successful career as a radioman, writer and businessman.
Aanenson says it's a good thing Burns began interviewing people six years ago, since some subjects in the miniseries are now "impaired or dead. My generation is moving on fast."
Will America be a lesser place when he and his comrades are gone? "I can't say that," he says. "But I could say I fear for what [Americans'] values will be. And that's about as far as I dare go with that." Doug Elfman
'THE WAR: A NECESSARY WAR' Rating 4 out of 4
At Pearl Harbor, the original Ground Zero, Daniel Inouye found a woman's corpse with the head severed, her arms wrapped around a dead baby.
"This is what I had to pick up. At 17," he says.
Soon after, in Sacramento, Calif., William Perkins was drafted into a blacks-only military unit. He laughed, then served in an era when he was refused service in businesses owned by whites, on whose behalf he killed.
That was just the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II, and it is but the start of "The War," director Ken Burns' 15-hour miniseries starting tonight on PBS.
It is 6 1/2 years in the making -- a brutal look back as told through interviews with vets (some have since died), family recollections and battlefield footage.
The boys of war become the bodies of war.
Off to bloody graves they go, except for those who live to tell horror stories about how they helped save history and the future, by killing and coming home.
It is not political, pro-war or anti-war. I'll touch merely on accounts from the first, two-hour-plus installment, to let you discover much more.
One definition of being a military hero is to kill, kill, kill; another is to die. Glenn Frasier killed. He didn't want to. But he witnessed a good friend's death:
"All I ever found of him was his left foot and a shoe. And when that Japanese Zero turned his wings right above the trees and started to fly away, I could see him with a smile on his face. And at that point, I had no problem with killing people. In fact, it got to the point where I hunted them."
Advertisement
One moment, you're disturbed and angry to hear personal stories of how a human (the enemy) could viciously slaughter POWs (Americans). The next, you're disturbed and angry to hear details of GIs responding in kind.
"The American bodies had been mutilated," says Sid Phillips, a Marine at Guadalcanal. "They had been mutilated and had had their genitals stuffed in their mouths. Our battalion never took a prisoner after that."
After "The War" wrapped, some groups complained that the film, at that point, shortchanged Latinos' contribution. So Burns and Lynn Novick, the co-director and co-producer, interviewed more vets.
The new footage shows Burns was right to amend. One new voice belongs to Bill Lansford from East Los Angeles (a vet of Guadalcanal's "Carlon's Raiders"). He chillingly recounts listening to nearby American POWs in agony. Out of spite, Lansford's unit began massacring captured enemies.
"We were supposed to be good guys," he says. "There were no reporters with us, so the word never got out until much later that that had happened. And some people still deny it. But I was there. And I'm telling you that we did it."
'I've killed so many men .... you never quite get over that'
During World War II, Quentin C. Aanenson got so used to the smell of rotting death that the stench began to seem "like home."
"There was decomposition of corpses and primate animals and so forth. It was close up and personal," says Aanenson, 86, one of the storytellers in Ken Burns' "The War." "You got so used to it."
The miniseries often focuses on the effect of the war on four regional towns. Aanenson grew up in the Midwestern city of Luverne, Minn. He killed many men while flying P-47 Thunderbolts into Normandy and throughout Europe.
As he does in the miniseries, he tells the Sun-Times about his mindset, then and now.
"At the time, I was doing it to save American lives," he says. "Sometimes, as recently as on the way back from that mission, I would start to feel this, 'I've killed so many men.' And that haunts you, no matter how you ..." he says, then pauses to stop tears from starting. "You never quite get over that."
I tell him it seems odd that after WW11, America was populated with vets who were, for lack of a better word, "killers."
"Yes," he says. "But we wanted to go on with our lives when we got home. So they used the term 'Reluctant Generation,' or 'Reticent Generation.' "
Aanenson went from the service to Louisiana State University, where he met his future wife and finished the college education the Depression had interrupted.
"I was in that traumatized phase where anything about the war would bring me uptight. No one would have noticed it at all. But mentally I was going through the distress of it all."
He wanted meaning in his life. So he began a successful career as a radioman, writer and businessman.
Aanenson says it's a good thing Burns began interviewing people six years ago, since some subjects in the miniseries are now "impaired or dead. My generation is moving on fast."
Will America be a lesser place when he and his comrades are gone? "I can't say that," he says. "But I could say I fear for what [Americans'] values will be. And that's about as far as I dare go with that." Doug Elfman
'THE WAR: A NECESSARY WAR' Rating 4 out of 4
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