The Pacific - Season 1 Episode 9 - Patreon Version
Added 2024-06-13 13:00:10 +0000 UTCHello , I am slightly changing the schedule this week, as I a little bit screwed up with the editing the movie.... So hopefully you guys wont be too upset!
Have a great day everyone :)
Comments
Haven't said so before, but I look forward to your notes and comments almost as much as Dasha's reactions. Great stuff as always and thanks for taking the time to write all that here as you did with BoB. Great stuff.
SpiffMan
2024-06-14 13:23:54 +0000 UTCGOT, GOT, GOT, GOT, GOT, GOT, GOT, GOT, GOT, GOT!
Dave Carmichael
2024-06-14 03:12:10 +0000 UTCCongratulations, Dasha, you've almost made it to light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, this episode is those Sphinx guardians with the laser eyes from The Neverending Story, and you have to pass them to get there... The Battle of Okinawa was the last major battle of the Pacific War, and was also its bloodiest. Over 50,000 Americans and 100,000 Japanese and conscripted Okinawans were killed. Additionally, between 40,000 and 100,000 Okinawan civilians were killed. It also saw one of the most intense uses of kamikazes in the entire War, with over 1500 aircraft launched in suicide attacks. The incident with them digging right into a corpse was a common occurrence. The rain was coming down SO hard on Okinawa bodies would literally sink into the mud and disappear until some unsuspecting Marine had to dig a foxhole. Sledge did indeed carry a pipe later in the War. In fact, Sledge's family was so impressed and touched by Joe Mazzello's performance they gifted him with the ACTUAL pipe Sledge smoked. Rami Malek, who played Snafu, most famously played Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. He's also known for Mr. Robot, and most recently the Bond film No Time To Die. Marines are ALWAYS riflemen first. Even the pilots. Most battles in the Pacific didn't involve civilians, making battles like Saipan and Okinawa a unique environment for the Marines. The Japanese viewed and treated the Okinawans as second-class citizens, frequently using them as human shields. Many were also forced to commit suicide rather than surrender to the advancing American forces (mass suicides also happened on Saipan, though many of the civilians were convinced to do so with propaganda that the Americans would rape and murder them. There's very famous footage of a woman on Saipan leaping off the cliffs). That woman and her baby...dear GOD that woman and her baby... When this episode originally aired I kept seeing that play over and over in my head for days afterwards. USS Bunker Hill would be knocked out of action for the rest of the War by the attack referenced in the episode, and would never properly return to service. Of the American fleet carriers that survived the War, only USS Franklin (damaged by a pair of bomb hits while launching strikes against mainland Japan) suffered a greater loss of life. Bunker Hill participated in troop transport duties bringing US troops home after the War, before being decommissioned in 1947. Franklin and Bunker Hill were saved by the Navy for some time for a planned refit, but this never took place, and both ships were ultimately scrapped. Ironically, parts of Bunker Hill's armor are still in use today; since she was built before the first nuclear bomb was detonated during the Trinity tests, her steel is less contaminated by radioactivity and thus valuable as shielding for particle detectors. Her ship's bell was also repurposed for her namesake vessel, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser Bunker Hill, which is still in service today. You know things are bad when it's "Shelton" not "Snafu." Sadly, Peck probably snapped in large part because of how Sledge, Snafu, and Leyden had been treating him this entire time. The hut they find the baby in is the same one Sledge was ordered to call an artillery shot on. The woman he comforts as she dies instead of giving a mercy-kill did indeed happen, however Sledge didn't JUST comfort her; he found a corpsman to try to help her (there was nothing they could do for her). Oof, that guy throwing Sledge's own words back at him after shooting the surrendering kid. The fighting on Okinawa was so bloody that it directly contributed to the decision, for good or ill, to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you didn't catch it, that was what Sledge's CO was discussing in the final scene about a bomb that "vaporized an entire city." And as if that wasn't clear enough, they threw in a shot of a formation of B-29s flying overhead, one of which, Enola Gay, was used to drop the first bomb on Hiroshima. Enola Gay and Bockscar, (not a misspelling) the aircraft that bombed Nagasaki, have both been preserved in museums. Enola Gay in the Smithsonian, and Bockscar at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Both remain controversial due to the continuing debate over the use of the bombs.
DE Wyatt
2024-06-14 02:14:48 +0000 UTC
