Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Episode 9 of The Pacific, "Okinawa", follows very much in the footsteps of the previous episode, "Iwo Jima". Historically the two campaigns were pretty much one right after the other. Each entailed weeks of pitched battles.

Brutal combat has been the norm across this series. In Okinawa it reaches a new level of brutality. American soldiers are shocked and dismayed to see Japanese soldiers using the local civilian population as human shields... and worse, as human bombs.

Eugene Sledge is the main viewpoint character in this episode. Sledge, previously the mild mannered new recruit from a genteel family in Mobile, Alabama is now the grizzled combat veteran showing the newer recruits how to survive in brutal combat. The new level of brutality really gets to him, though; particularly seeing civilians exploited as human shields.

The episode ends about 6 weeks after the Battle of Okinawa is concluded. The Marines still on the island are climbing up on trucks to be sent somewhere else. An officer tells them, "They dropped some new kind of bomb" that destroyed an entire city. That would be the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

BTW, some historians hold that the brutality of combat, and the Japanese Army ethos never to surrender, seen on Okinawa influenced American military leaders to drop the bombs. Prior to those bombs the plan had been to use Okinawa's harbor and airfield as an critical launching point for an assault on the Island of Japan that would involve 3,000,000 US soldiers.

This week I've continued watching The Pacific, a 10 episode miniseries about WWII. In many ways it's a companion piece to Band of Brothers, the critically acclaimed miniseries about US Army paratroopers (the storied 101st. Airborne) fighting in Europe. Among the ways they're similar is that both have Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks as executive producers. They're different, though, in that while Band of Brothers was critically acclaimed and I found it engrossing, The Pacific has routinely fallen flat, marred by frequent lack of a compelling storyline and/or sympathetic characters to follow. Why do I keep watching it, then? I guess I keep hoping it will get better. And in episodes 5, 6, and 7, it kind of does.

These three episodes, the broad middle of the series, tell the story of the Battle of Peleliu. If you paid attention during WWII history class and don't remember that name or location, that's one of the most important points about the Battle of Peleliu. But it's not one this series makes, except only in brief, passing reference later.

Colossal Intelligence Failures

At Peleliu Island, the 1st, 5th, and 7th Marines are sent to capture a Japanese airstrip. The military's plan is that it's a critical toehold to support an invasion of the Philippines, which will then be the crucial launching point for an assault on Japan to win WWII.

The military's plan is also that securing this island will take just a few days. Military intelligence is that there are only a few thousand Japanese soldiers defending the island, greatly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of US soldiers committed to the operation. On that mark the military intelligence was wrong, though "only" by 2-3x. There were 10,000 Japanese defenders.

The far bigger intelligence failure was in assessing how well prepared the Japanese defenders were. They had built heavy fortifications, including an extensive network of tunnels in natural caves in the coral ridge that overlooked the airfield. They were so well defended in these positions that it ultimately took more than 2 months to defeat them, and the US experienced brutal attacks and heavy casualties in doing so.

One Side Learned, One Side Didn't

Part of what happened here, though the series doesn't say it— I figured this out from reading up on the history myself— is that one side was learning, one side wasn't. The Japanese were the side that was learning.

In defending previous island assaults, the Japanese would fight Americans on the beach, trying to repel the landing. Japanese generals saw that this was ineffective. Among other things, it left their soldiers exposed to powerful attacks by naval artillery and heavy machine guns. Japanese leaders also saw that the notorious "banzai assault" was too costly. While it had strong shock value at first, once Americans started anticipating it they were able to inflict heavy casualties against charging infantry with their rifles and machine guns.

At Peleliu the Japanese pulled all their defenses back. They hid in bunkers and fortified caves. They built these hideouts to resist common patterns of attacks by rifle fire, artillery, and grenades. The Japanese also practiced excellent fire discipline. They held their fire during artillery and bombing attacks, as rifle fire does pretty much nothing against air and naval assault except confirm the defenders' location. As a result the US Navy thought that after 3 days of bombardment before the amphibious assault they had largely destroyed the Japanese defenders... when in fact they had barely touched them.

Brutal, Brutal Fighting

Fighting in the Battle of Peleliu was brutal from start to finish. ...And again, that finish took more than 2 months. One respect in which the writing of these episodes was good is that it doesn't reveal up front how long the fighting would last. That immerses us viewers in the characters' developing sense of dread. "Alright, men, let's do this!" turns to "Shit, this is hard," to "OMG, is this ever going to be over?!" to "I hope when they kill me I get to die quickly."

Just capturing the airfield took 3 days of brutal fighting. The Japanese soldiers remained in their well fortified positions and held their fire (part of fire discipline, mentioned above) until the Americans were close enough for maximum damage.

While a lot of US Marines were able to land on the island they were not able to establish any kind of beachhead or organized position. That meant they couldn't get supplies in. The weather on Peleliu was brutally hot, with daytime temperatures surpassing 105° F (40° C). The Marines couldn't even get water. Overheating and dehydration contributed to the Marines suffering enormous losses.

Even once the airfield was captured it wasn't actually secured. There were still significant Japanese defenders in the hills overlooking the airfield. They'd fire on US soldiers from well fortified positions by day and stage spoiling raids by night. The US had to find each defensive area and basically pry them out. That took a long time— that's where the battle stretched from several days to 10 weeks— and came at enormous cost of casualties.

Never Have So Many Paid So Much for So Little

I remarked near the start of this blog that it's unsurprising if you've never heard of the Battle of Peleliu even if you're familiar, by name if nothing else, with other major WWII Pacific battles such as Guadalcanal, Bataan, and Iwo Jima. That's because while Peleliu was a major battle, in terms of effort expended and lives lost, it was ultimately a pointless battle. The US military did not use Peleliu for staging and attack or defending the flank while invading the Philippines. In fact they never even used the airfield after securing it.

The US suffered 10,000 casualties in the Battle of Peleliu. That was just over 20% of the total forces committed. Among the Marines, though, the casualty rate was much higher. The 1st Marines suffered an astonishing 71% casualties. Those men were put through a meat grinder... and ultimately for nothing.

This is a reality of history that this TV miniseries makes only passing mention of. It's, like, one sentence of voiceover narration, and it's not even until the intro of the next episode.

But Is It Good TV?

Ultimately while this trio of episodes are better than the few before them, they still fall well short of being great TV. Partly that's because the screenwriters and directors continue to struggle with the fundamentals of visual storytelling. The visuals themselves are beautiful, but the story is too hard to follow. There are too many characters, and frankly they all look the same in identical shirts and helmets with blood and sweat and grit smeared on their faces.

What's good about these 3 episodes, then? They're engrossing for their frenetic action. It seems like there's never more than a few seconds of screentime between someone shooting or being shot at. The characters all become sympathetic because they're living through hell. When a soldier breaks here, you feel for them. And the men who've been assholes to each other for several episodes start looking after each other instead of looking for opportunities to pick on each other. ...Well, mostly. One guy gets ragged on by his whole squad for shitting himself in an ambush.

So, is it good TV? Ultimately no. And the reason isn't just the fundamentals of good plotting and characterization. That's part of the problem. The other part of the problem is the whitespace in these episodes, the things they don't address. Yes, Peleliu was brutal; we see that in High Definition. But it was also pointless. Some war leaders knew that. Some leaders knew that and they were overruled. The media was distracted by other things, so this story of wasted lives was barely reported. Could this have been avoided? Were any lessons learned? The show doesn't address that beyond a single sentence. A single sentence after 3 episodes. Almost everything I've written here, these 1,000+ words, is from research the episodes prompted me to go and do on my own. It's a sad statement that a TV show's most important contribution is that it prompted me to go somewhere else to understand what really happened.

Last night I watched ep. 3 of The Pacific, entitled "Melbourne". Yes, it's been a few weeks since I've written about this miniseries. No, it's not just because my blog has been backlogged. I actually haven't watched the shows in almost 4 weeks. Frankly I'm finding this show much less compelling than Band of Brothers, which inspired it.

Episode 3, "Melbourne", is frankly an example of why this show is much less compelling than the other WWII miniseries. In this episode, the marines are stationed in Melbourne, Australia. to recover from the grueling Guadalcanal campaign shown in the previous 2 episodes and to wait for the US to produce & deliver enough weaponry for them to take on the next campaign. If that reads like it should be the crawl text in a quick montage that introduces the next combat-heavy episode, you're catching my drift. The problem is, that's the whole episode.

A few character-driven stories do occur here. Sgt. John Basilone, one of the viewpoint characters, is awarded the Medal of Honor. In case you don't know, it's the highest award for the US military. Two other viewpoint characters, Bob Leckie and Sid Phillips, both find girlfriends in Melbourne. While these could be compelling vignettes that convey larger issues rather than just character drama, the writers kind of whiff on that idea.

• The story of Bob Leckie's romance goes on way too long, particularly in that it reaches an abrupt and very unsatisfying dead end. Plus, the sex scenes are gratuitous to the point of feeling wrong.


• Sid Phillips' romance story errs in the opposite way. It's so short, basically just one scene, it's like, why even bother?


• John Basilone's story could have been fleshed out a bit more. The writers only gloss over the character drama of the Medal of Honor recipient realizing that he needs to act like a war hero now; he can't go all drunken-cowboy around Melbourne like his buddies anymore. And he's being sent back home to sell war bonds. There's the opportunity for some serious Captain America energy here, portraying the soldier's frustration with being assigned a responsibility he thinks is way less important than what he can do by leading a squad in combat. But again, the writers only gloss over that.

Will I continue watching the miniseries after this? Well, I already did. I was bored last night and not ready to go to bed, so I clicked through to episode 4. I figured, maybe this one will get back to actual war. 🤣

It's been a few weeks since I started watching the miniseries The Pacific. I wrote one blog then got sidetracked with life. Fortunately I'm not far behind on blogging as I've only watched the first 2 episodes out of 10. This blog is about the remainder of episode 1, "Leckie/Guadalcanal".

After the character introductions I wrote about in my previous blog the episode shifts to marines being deployed to Guadalcanal in the Pacific in August 1942. A text overlay notes that this was the first time US forces in the Pacific went on the offensive. For months they'd been defending against Japanese attacks... and losing.

As the soldiers land on the island I noticed their gear, especially as compared to Band of Brothers. In particular Marines units have heavy automatic weapons. Browning .30 caliber machine guns are shown.



Marines travel light... though not quite as lightly as paratroopers in the other series. This Browning gun is heavy. It's got a large water-cooled steel jacket around the barrel. One soldier carries the gun itself; a second soldier carries the tripod it mounts on. I think a third soldier carries extra boxes of ammunition for it. The Army paratroopers didn't have heavy automatic weapons like that.

It turns out heavy weapons like the Browning .30 cal were critical to the Marines' success. The Marines 1st Division lands unchallenged. Japanese forces occupying the island have pulled back, planning an ambush later. The Marines set up positions at the mouth of Alligator Creek near Tenaru Beach.

That night the Japanese attack in force. Wave after wave of Japanese infantry tries crossing the creek. The marines with rifles and handguns can't shoot them fast enough. The Japanese are starting to encircle the Americans. But the teams with Browning .30 cal machine guns blaze away, mowing down entire lines of enemy soldiers.

In the morning the Americans, victorious, survey the battlefield.



There are dead Japanese soldiers, everywhere. The beach is strewn with dead bodies.

Historical records tell us that 793 Japanese soldiers were killed in the Battle of Tenaru. The Japanese Army units underestimated the American Marines. They were better defended, and had more powerful weapons, than the Japanese expected. The battle was brutal. Even finding themselves outgunned, the Japanese did not slow, retreat, or surrender. The Americans had to kill them to the last man.