THE WAR premiered on KACV in September 2007 with an encore viewing
in
November 2007. Another encore production is scheduled for November
2008. The schedule is as follows:
-
Air schedule for THE
WAR
-
- Episode 3
- “Deadly
Calling” 11/09 at 11:30 a.m.
- Episode 4
- “Pride
of Our Nation” 11/09 at 1:30 p.m.
- Episode 5
- “Fubar” 11/16 at 11:30 a.m.
- Episode 6
- “The
Ghost Front” 11/23 at 12:00 p.m.
- Episode 7
- “World
without War” 11/30 at 11:30 a.m.
As part of the Texas Panhandle WWII Stories project, however,
KACV provided
each public library within the Texas Panhandle Library System with a full
DVD set of THE WAR in addition to the accompanying book and audio CDs. KACV
encourages individuals to contact their local public library to check out these
materials.
THE WAR Viewer's Guide
Episode One
“ A Necessary War”
December 1941-December 1942
After a haunting overview of the
Second World War, an epoch of killing that
engulfed the world from 1939 to 1945
and cost at least 50 million lives,
the inhabitants of four towns — Mobile,
Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury,
Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota — recall
their communities on the eve of the
conflict. For them, and for most
Americans finally beginning to recover
from the
Great Depression, the events overseas
seem impossibly far away. Their tranquil
lives are shattered by the shock
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
and America is thrust into the greatest
cataclysm in history. Along with
millions
of other young men, Sid Phillips
and Willie Rushton of Mobile, Ray
Leopold
of Waterbury and Walter Thompson
and Burnett Miller of Sacramento
enter
the armed forces and begin to train
for war.
In the Philippines, two Americans
thousands of miles from home, Corporal
Glenn Frazier and Sascha Weinzheimer
(who was 8 years old in 1941), are
caught up in the Japanese onslaught
there, as American and Filipino forces
retreat onto Bataan while thousands
of civilians are rounded up and imprisoned
in Manila.
Meanwhile, back home, 110,000 Japanese
Americans all along the West Coast,
including some 7,000 from Sacramento
and the surrounding valley, are forced
by the government to abandon their
homes and businesses and are relocated
to inland internment camps. On the
East Coast, German U-boats menace Allied
shipping just offshore, sending hundreds
of ships and millions of tons of materiel
to the bottom of the sea. The United
States seems utterly unprepared for
this kind of total war. Witnessing
all of this is Katharine Phillips of
Mobile, who remembers sightings of
U-boats just outside Mobile Bay, and
Al McIntosh, the editor of the Rock
County Star Herald in Luverne, who
chronicles the travails of every family
in town.
In June 1942, the Navy manages
an improbable victory over the Japanese
at the Battle of Midway. In August,
American land forces, including
Sid Phillips of Mobile, face the vaunted
Japanese army for the first time
at Guadalcanal, armed with single
shot, bolt-action rifles and just 10 days
worth of ammunition. Abandoned
by their
fleet with no support from the
sea or the air, the men are strafed and
bombed daily and under constant
attack from enemy troops hidden in the jungle.
After six long months, the Americans
finally prevail and, in the process,
stop Japan’s expansion in
the Pacific.
At the end of America’s
first year of war, more than 35,000 Americans
in uniform have died. Before the
war can end, 10 times that many will
lose
their lives.
Episode Two
“ When Things Get Tough”
January 1943-December 1943
By January
1943, Americans have been at war for more than a
year. The Germans,
with their vast war machine, still
occupy most of Western Europe,
and the Allies have not yet been able
to agree on a plan or a timetable to dislodge
them. For the time being, they
will have to be content to nip at the
edges of Hitler’s enormous domain.
American troops, including Charles
Mann of Luverne, are now ashore in
North Africa, ready to test themselves
for the first time against the German
and Italian armies. At Kasserine Pass,
Erwin Rommel’s seasoned veterans
quickly overwhelm the poorly led and
ill-equipped Americans, but in the
following weeks, after George Patton
assumes command, the Americans pull
themselves together and begin to beat
back the Germans. In the process, thousands
of soldiers learn to disregard the
belief that killing is a sin and come
to adopt the more professional outlook
that “killing is a craft,” as
reporter Ernie Pyle explains to
the readers back home.
Across the country, in cities such
as Mobile and Waterbury, nearly all
manufacturing is converted to the war
effort. Factories run around the clock,
and mass production reaches levels
unimaginable a few years earlier. Along
with millions of other women, Emma
Belle Petcher of Mobile enters the
industrial work force for the first
time, becoming an airplane inspector
while her city struggles to cope with
an overwhelming population explosion.
In Europe, thousands of American airmen
are asked to gamble their lives against
preposterous odds, braving flak and
German fighter planes on daylight bombing
missions over enemy territory. All
of them, including Earl Burke of Sacramento,
know that each time they return to
the air their chances of surviving
the war diminish.
Allied troops invade
Sicily and then southern Italy, where,
as they try
to move towards Rome, the weather turns
bad and the terrain grows more and
more forbidding — twisting mountain
roads, blown bridges — all under
constant German fire. With them is
Babe Ciarlo of Waterbury, whose division
loses 3,265 men in 56 days of fighting
in Italy — and moves less than
50 miles.
As 1943 comes to a close, Allied leaders
draw up plans for the long-delayed
invasion of the European continent;
Hitler put tens of thousands of laborers
to work strengthening his coastal defenses.
For the people of Mobile, Sacramento,
Waterbury and Luverne, things are bound
to get tougher still.
Episode Three
“ A Deadly Calling”
November 1943-June 1944
In fall 1943, after almost two years
of war, the American public is able
to see for the first time the terrible
toll the war is taking on its troops
when Life publishes a photograph of
the bodies of three GIs killed in action
at Buna. Despite American victories
in the Solomons and New Guinea, the
Japanese empire still stretches 4,000
miles, and victory seems a long way
off. In November, on the tiny Pacific
atoll of Tarawa, the Marines set out
to prove that any island, no matter
how fiercely defended, can be taken
by all-out frontal assault. Back home,
the public is devastated by color newsreel
footage of the furious battle, including
the bodies of Marines floating in the
surf, and grows more determined to
do whatever is necessary to hasten
the end of the war.
Mobile, Sacramento
and Waterbury have been transformed
into booming, overcrowded “war
towns,” and in Mobile — as
in scores of other cities — that
transformation leads to confrontation
and ugly racial violence.
African Americans,
asked to fight a war for freedom
while serving in
the strictly segregated armed forces,
demand equal rights, and the military
reluctantly agrees to some changes.
Blacks are allowed, for the first time
in two centuries, to join the Marine
Corps, and many, including John Gray
and Willie Rushton of Mobile, sign
on. They are trained for combat, but
most are assigned to service jobs instead.
Japanese-American men, originally designated
as “enemy aliens,” are
permitted to form a special segregated
unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
In Hawaii and in the internment camps,
thousands sign up, including Robert
Kashiwagi, Susumu Satow and Tim Tokuno
of Sacramento. They are sent to Mississippi
for training, where they are promised
they will be treated “as white
men.”
In Italy, Allied forces are stalled
in the mountains south of Rome, unable
to break through the German lines at
Monte Cassino. In the mud, snow and
bitter cold, the killing goes on all
winter and spring as the enemy manages
to fight off repeated Allied attacks.
A risky landing at Anzio ends in utter
failure, with the Germans gaining the
high ground and thousands of Allied
troops, including Babe Ciarlo of Waterbury,
totally exposed to enemy fire and unable
to advance for months.
In May, Allied soldiers
at Cassino and Anzio finally break
through, and
on June 4, they liberate Rome. But
in heading towards the city, they fail
to capture the retreating German army,
which takes up new positions on the
Adolf Hitler line north of Rome. Meanwhile,
the greatest test for the Allies — the
long-delayed invasion of France — is
now just days away.
Episode Four
“ Pride of Our Nation”
June 1944-August 1944
By June 1944, there
are signs on both sides of the world
that the tide of
the war is turning. On June 6, 1944 — D-Day — in
the European Theater, a million and
a half Allied troops embark on one
of the greatest invasions in history:
the invasion of France. Among them
are Dwain Luce of Mobile, who drops
behind enemy lines in a glider; Quentin
Aanenson of Luverne, who flies his
first combat mission over the Normandy
coast; and Joseph Vaghi of Waterbury,
who manages to survive the disastrous
landing on Omaha Beach where German
resistance nearly decimates the American
forces. It is the bloodiest day in
American history since the Civil War,
with nearly 2,500 Americans losing
their lives. But the Allies succeed
in tearing a 45-mile gap in Hitler’s
vaunted Atlantic Wall, and by day’s
end more than 150,000 men have landed
on French soil. They quickly find themselves
bogged down in the Norman hedgerows,
facing German troops determined to
make them pay for every inch of territory
they gain. For months, the Allies must
measure their progress in yards, and
they suffer far greater casualties
than anyone expected.
In the Pacific, the
long climb from island to island
toward the Japanese
homeland is well underway, but the
enemy seems increasingly determined
to defend to the death every piece
of territory it holds. The Marines,
including Ray Pittman of Mobile, fight
the costliest Pacific battle to date — on
the island of Saipan — encountering,
for the first time, Japanese civilians
who, like their soldiers, seem resolved
to die for their emperor rather than
surrender.
Back at home, while anxiously listening
to the radio, watching newsreels and
scanning casualty lists in the newspapers
for definitive information from the
battlefront, Americans do their best
to go about their normal lives, but
on doorsteps all across the country,
dreaded telegrams from the War Department
begin arriving at a rate inconceivable
just one year earlier.
In late July, Allied
forces break out of the hedgerows
in Normandy, and
by mid-August, the Germans are in full
retreat out of France. On August 25,
after four years of Nazi occupation,
Paris is liberated — and the
end of the war in Europe seems only
a few weeks away.
Episode Five
“ FUBAR”
September 1944-December 1944
By September 1944,
in Europe at least, the Allies seem
to be moving steadily
toward victory. “Militarily,” General
Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of
staff tells the press, “this
war is over.” But in the coming
months, on both sides of the world,
a generation of young men will learn
a lesson as old as war itself — that
generals make plans, plans go wrong
and soldiers die.
On the Western Front, American and
British troops massed on the German
border are desperately short of fuel,
having outrun their supply lines. Allied
commanders gamble on a risky scheme
to drop thousands of airborne troops,
including Dwain Luce of Mobile and
Harry Schmid of Sacramento, behind
enemy lines in Holland, but nothing
goes according to plan, and it becomes
painfully clear that the war in Europe
will not end before winter.
Over the next three
months, American soldiers are ordered
into some of Germany’s
most forbidding and most fiercely defended
terrain. In the Hurtgen Forest, tens
of thousands of GIs, including Tom
Galloway of Mobile, fight an unwinnable
battle in which the only victory to
be had is survival. During his missions
over Germany, fighter pilot Quentin
Aanenson of Luverne loses so many friends
and sees so much death that he comes
close to collapsing from despair. In
the Vosges Mountains, the 442nd Regimental
Combat Team, including Robert Kashiwagi,
Susumu Satow and Tim Tokuno of Sacramento,
is assigned to an overly ambitious
general and endures weeks of brutal
combat. At the end of October, they
are ordered to break through to a battalion
of Texas soldiers caught behind the
lines — no matter the cost.
In the Pacific, General MacArthur
is poised to invade the Philippines
at Leyte. Although the nearby island
of Peleliu holds little tactical value
for his campaign, the 1st Marine Division,
including Eugene Sledge and Willie
Rushton of Mobile, is ordered to take
it anyway. The battle is expected to
last four days, but the fighting drags
on for more than two months in one
of the most brutal and unnecessary
campaigns in the Pacific.
In October, with their
food supplies dangerously low, Sascha
Weinzheimer
of Sacramento and the other internees
at Santo Tomas camp in Manila thrill
to the sight and sound of American
carrier-based planes bombing Japanese
ships in the nearby bay, and a few
weeks later, American troops land on
the island of Leyte, 350 miles away.
In the movie theaters back home, as
Katharine Phillips of Mobile recalls,
Americans cheer the newsreels of General
MacArthur “returning.” But
months of bloody fighting lie ahead
before the Philippine Islands — and
the people imprisoned on them — can
be liberated.
Episode Six
“ The Ghost Front”
December 1944-March 1945
By December 1944, Americans have become
weary of the war their young men have
been fighting for three long years;
the stream of newspaper headlines telling
of new losses and telegrams bearing
bad news from the War Department seem
endless and unendurable.
In the Pacific, American
progress has been slow and costly,
with each
island more fiercely defended than
the last. In Europe, no one is prepared
for the massive counterattack Hitler
launches on December 16 in the Ardennes
Forest in Belgium and Luxemburg. Tom
Galloway of Mobile, Burnett Miller
of Sacramento and Ray Leopold of Waterbury
are there, among the Americans caught
up in the biggest battle on the Western
Front — the Battle of the Bulge.
Back home, Katharine Phillips of Mobile
and Burt Wilson of Sacramento are shocked
to see newspaper headlines showing
the Germans on the offensive and begin
to wonder, “Are we losing now
that we’re this close?”
Meanwhile, at Santo Tomas Camp in
Manila, thousands of internees, including
Sascha Weinzheimer of Sacramento, are
now starving, desperately trying to
hold onto life long enough to be liberated.
At Yalta, Allied leaders
agree on a plan to end the war that
includes
massive bombing raids aimed at German
oil facilities, defense factories,
roads, railways and cities. In March
alone, Allied warplanes drop 163,864
tons of bombs on Germany — almost
as much as they have dropped in the
preceding three years combined.
In the Pacific, Allied
bombers are ready to batter Japan
as well — but
first, the air strip on Iwo Jima, an
inhospitable volcanic island halfway
between Allied air bases on Tinian
and the Japanese home islands, needs
to be taken. There the Marines, including
Ray Pittman of Mobile, face 21,000
determined Japanese defenders, who,
with no hope of reinforcement or re-supply,
have been ordered to kill as many Americans
as possible before being killed themselves.
After almost a month of desperate fighting,
the island is secured, and American
bombers are free to begin their full-fledged
air assault on Japan. In the coming
months, Allied bombings will set the
cities of Japan ablaze, killing hundreds
of thousands and leaving millions homeless.
By the middle of March
1945, the end of the war in Europe
seems imminent.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans
are crossing the Rhine and driving
into the heart of Germany, while the
Russians are within 50 miles of Berlin.
Still, back in Luverne, Al McIntosh
warns his readers to keep their heads
down and keep working “until
there is no doubt of victory any more” because “lots
of our best boys have been lost in
victory drives before.”
Episode Seven
“ A World Without War”
March 1945-December 1945
In spring 1945, although the numbers
of dead and wounded have more than
doubled since D-Day, the people of
Mobile, Sacramento, Waterbury and Luverne
understand all too well that there
will be more bad news from the battlefield
before the war can end. That March,
when Americans go to the movies, President
Franklin Roosevelt warns them in a
newsreel that although the Nazis are
on the verge of collapse, the final
battle with Japan could stretch on
for years.
In the Pacific, Eugene
Sledge of Mobile is once again forced
to enter what
he calls “the abyss” in
the battle for the island of Okinawa — the
gateway to Japan. Glenn Frazier of
Alabama, one of 168,000 Allied prisoners
of war still in Japanese hands, celebrates
the arrival of carrier planes overhead,
but despairs of ever getting out of
Japan alive.
In mid-April, Americans
are shocked by news bulletins announcing
that President
Roosevelt is dead; many do not even
know the name of their new president,
Harry Truman. Meanwhile, in Europe,
as Allied forces rapidly push across
Germany from the east and west, American
and British troops, including Burnett
Miller of Sacramento, Dwain Luce of
Mobile and Ray Leopold of Waterbury,
discover for themselves the true horrors
of the Nazis’ industrialized
barbarism — at Buchenwald, Ludwigslust,
Dachau, Hadamar, Mauthausen and hundreds
of other concentration camps.
Finally, on May 8,
with their country in ruins and their
fuehrer dead by
his own hand, the Nazis surrender.
But as Eugene Sledge remembers, to
the Marines and soldiers still fighting
in the Pacific, “No one cared
much. Nazi Germany might as well have
been on the moon.” The battle
on Okinawa grinds on until June, and
when it is finally over, 92,000 Japanese
soldiers, as well as tens of thousands
of Okinawan civilians, have been killed.
Okinawa also is the worst battle of
the Pacific for the Americans, and
as they prepare to move on to Japan
itself, still more terrible losses
seem inevitable. Allied leaders at
Potsdam set forth the terms under which
they will agree to end the war, but
for most of Japan’s rulers, despite
the agony their people are enduring,
unconditional surrender still remains
unthinkable.
Then, on August 6,
1945, under orders from President
Truman, an American
plane drops a single atomic bomb on
the city of Hiroshima, obliterating
40,000 men, women and children in an
instant; 100,000 more die of burns
and radiation within days (another
100,000 will succumb to radiation poisoning
over the next five years). Two days
later, Russia declares war against
Japan. On August 9, a second American
atomic bomb destroys the city of Nagasaki,
and the rulers of Japan decide at last
to give up — and the greatest
cataclysm in history comes to an end.
In the following months
and years, millions of young men
return home — to
pick up the pieces of their lives and
to try to learn how to live in a world
without war.
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