HBO's The Pacific, Part 9

 

Part 9 of HBO's The Pacific debuted on 2 May 2010. This episode focuses on the campaign or Okinawa.

The main character in this episode is:

Pvt Eugene Sledge (played by Joe Mazzello) Co K, 3rd Bn, 5th Marines

Timeframe of Part 9 - April-June 1945

Episode 9 of HBO's The Pacific takes us to Okinawa, the final ground campaign of the war, with Eugene Sledge and his buddies in Co. K, 3rd Bn, Fifth Marines. Of the primary characters in the mini-series, Sledge is the only one still in combat. Robert Leckie, who was wounded on Peleliu, is still in the hospital recovering, and John Basilone now lies dead in the black sands of Iwo Jima.

The real campaign for Okinawa was one of the toughest of the war, and the casualty figures for our forces were not only shocking, but horrendous in their size. 88,000 Marines were assigned to units of the III Amphibious Corps for this campaign, and nearly 21,000 of them were killed or wounded. Adding to the total were 560 attached Naval medical personnel who were killed or wounded.

The casualty numbers from Okinawa were hard to take for the American public. They were tired of the war, especially since the fighting in Europe was drawing to a close. And for the American troops locked in battle, it must've seemed like the war would never end. In his memoir of combat, With The Old Breed, Eugene Sledge recorded the mood in King Company on VE-Day:

"On 8 May Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally. We were told this momentous news, but considering our own peril and misery, no one cared much. "So what" was typical of the remarks I heard around me. We were resigned to the fact that the Japanese would fight to total extinction on Okinawa, as they had elsewhere, and that Japan would have to be invaded with the same gruesome prospects. Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon."

As depicted in episode 9, the terrain is a jumble of blasted hills, shattered villages, muddy trails. Decomposed corpses dot the landscape, rotting in the open, and death is ever-present. Sledge, his best buddy Snafu (Rami Malek), Cpl Burgin (Martin McCann), and the other Marines in King Company go from place to place, one battle after another, never sure who is going to live and who will die. The fighting seems to never end, and they lose hope for the future. The entire episode takes on the feel of an odyssey of pain and suffering.

The Japanese use every dirty trick in the book. They shield themselves behind Okinawan civilians, exposing these innocent people to death. Even though they are cornered and cannot win, the Japanese troops will not surrender. Instead, they launch futile suicide attacks against the Marines, throwing their lives away. After one of these attacks, Sledge pulls out his .45 caliber pistol and kills a wounded Japanese soldier. An officer runs up to him, and says he just gave away their position. It struck me as an odd line since the Marines had just been firing every weapon from the same place.

Sledge looks at the officer with disdain and replies, "I think they got a pretty good idea where we are." (He must've been thinking along the same lines as me.) The officer questions Sledge about using a sidearm to kill the enemy when he was supposed to be observing for the mortar section. Sledge boils with rage and yells, "We were sent here to kill Japs, weren't we? What difference does it make what weapon we use? I'd use my goddamn hands if I had to."

In episode 4 we confronted the limits that a man can endure, seen through the ordeal of Robert Leckie in the green hell of Cape Gloucester. Episode 9 forces us to confront the searing question, "How much can a group of men endure?" The characters are driven to the breaking point, not once or twice, but again and again. Somehow, each time, they find some inner will that pushes them on. There is no respite and each day is a struggle to just survive, not only physically, but mentally as well.

At one point, Sledge careens down a mud-slick hill and collides with a rotted corpse. He is covered with maggots, and frantically tries to scrape the filthy bugs off him. In another scene, a replacement goes off the deep end and stands exposed trying to get the enemy to shoot him. One of his buddies drags him down, but is killed in the process. Even the indomitable Snafu questions whether they will survive. The real Sledge wrote of this inner struggle:

"I existed from moment to moment, sometimes thinking death would have been preferable. We were in the depths of the abyss, the ultimate horror of war. During the fighting around the Umurbrogal Pocket on Peleliu, I had been depressed by the wastage of human lives. But in the mud and driving rain before Shuri, we were surrounded by maggots and decay. Men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell's own cesspool."

Joe Mazzello is very credible in his portrayal of Eugene Sledge. Since we first met him early in the mini-series, he has changed and matured, as the real Sledge doubtless did under the relentless pressure of the Pacific war. As Snafu Shelton, Rami Malek has been a real scene stealer, bringing dry humor and wit to his portrayal. Although Shelton is himself a young man, he calls newer Marines "boot," and pulls rank on them like an old salt. It's fun watching Malek and in some ways, he's the best written character in the series. Without a doubt, Malek is lucky to have some of the best lines of dialogue.

While I can understand that the production team wanted the Peleliu sequences to be the centerpiece of the program, the First Marine Division spent 2 and 1/2 months in combat on Okinawa. With less than an hour to episode 9, the storyline has a somewhat rushed feel, as if Spielberg and company don't want us to miss anything, but they can't do it all. In his book, Eugene Sledge devoted 115 pages to Peleliu and 128 to Okinawa. But HBO's version has three episodes about Peleliu, and only one about Okinawa. Such is the nature of dramatizations, I suppose.

I feel that, overall, this is one of the strongest episodes of The Pacific. The sets continue to be astounding in their size and detail. As in each episode, the supporting cast is superb in their portrayals, and the battle drills are spot-on. It is amazing to watch all this unfolding, and I only wish I could see it on the big screen. The television just doesn't do justice to some of the scenes.

Is there such a thing as a "realistic" view of World War II combat, or of any war, for that matter? It is a very tough question to answer. But episode 9 of The Pacific does a fine job, in my opinion, of telling this story about men in battle. On a broader scale, it also illustrates the brutal nature of war itself. World War II Gyrene gives this episode an outstanding score of A-plus.

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