CRUSADE IN THE PACIFIC(1951) Narrated by Westbrook Van Voorhis.
An early 50s television documentary series covering every possible aspect of the United States' heroic struggle to overcome and pulverize the fanatical, death worshiping and immensly barbaric and evil Imperial Japanese Empire.
This 20(?) ep doc series must be considered the grandfather of all TV docs and documentary series preceding by several years both VICTORY AT SEA and THE WORLD AT WAR and it does not show its age at all. In fact, it is so good that, before I looked it up, I had assumed it to date from either the late 50s or early 60s period. Besides being very well done technically with solid narration by Van Voorhis, it is also very different in tone and style from what followed.
To wit. The series is VERY much a military campaign chronicle concerned specifically only with matters of overall stragety, tactics and equipement. There is little.....if at all of any of the now de riquer interviews with people who were there. The series does not focus on any individual commanders and/or soldiers other than to describe what they did at so and so and how it affected the Pacific theater. So this is not the place to get biographic information on Bull Halsey or Yamashita. The series does not dwell on Japanese atrocities in any great detail usually not more than a sentence nor do we get any of the usual handwringing over the EVIL Americans beating up on poor Nipponese gentleman that is foisted upon us nowadays.
That is not what this is about. No. It is about the War in the Pacific IN DETAIL. As such, it covers battles that even I had never heard of before..particulary all the naval battles in the Guadacanal/Bougainville theater plus the War in the Northern Pacific which is almost always neglected. Macarthur's advance up the Asian coast---another neglected subject is given multiple episodes. There is a great deal of footage especially in New Guinea that I had never seen before. I was also quite amazed to learn in the ep concerning Japan's surrender just how much territory Japan still controlled and how many armies she was still fielding. From Wake Island to Malaya from China to the Philipines where the Japanese were still holding out in Sept, 1945!! Man if it was not for the Bomb, World War Two would most certainly extended into 1946 and at Lord knows the cost in lives. And so much for modern armchair strategists who claim they oppossed the Iraqi front because we had not "secured" the Afghanistan(and again the Philipines) fronts first. If the US had done that in the Pacific, we would still have been fighting in the Solomons in 1946!!
Quibbles. While the doc devotes an entire ep to the air war against Japan up to and including Hiroshima, it does not mention Nagasaki. Also the DVD set that I viewed(put out by Madacy) seemed to be missing at least one ep as the ep about Japan's surrender and occupation ends with a teaser about the Soviet Union's attempt to use the post war chaos in Asia as an opportunity to take over. Presumably that ep/s would have covered the Communist aggressions in Malaya, the Philipines, China and Korea. One imagines this must be yet another in the endless examples of the quiet soft censorship in the media of things critical of Communism.
Still, this is another gem from the Golden Age of television. A fine example of the TV doc before PC turned everything into proganda for the Democrat and Communist Parties AND BOTTOM LINE the absolute best doc on the War with Japan. I have never seen better. And I have seen alot.
If interested, this is the one to see.
Recommended.
An early 50s television documentary series covering every possible aspect of the United States' heroic struggle to overcome and pulverize the fanatical, death worshiping and immensly barbaric and evil Imperial Japanese Empire.
This 20(?) ep doc series must be considered the grandfather of all TV docs and documentary series preceding by several years both VICTORY AT SEA and THE WORLD AT WAR and it does not show its age at all. In fact, it is so good that, before I looked it up, I had assumed it to date from either the late 50s or early 60s period. Besides being very well done technically with solid narration by Van Voorhis, it is also very different in tone and style from what followed.
To wit. The series is VERY much a military campaign chronicle concerned specifically only with matters of overall stragety, tactics and equipement. There is little.....if at all of any of the now de riquer interviews with people who were there. The series does not focus on any individual commanders and/or soldiers other than to describe what they did at so and so and how it affected the Pacific theater. So this is not the place to get biographic information on Bull Halsey or Yamashita. The series does not dwell on Japanese atrocities in any great detail usually not more than a sentence nor do we get any of the usual handwringing over the EVIL Americans beating up on poor Nipponese gentleman that is foisted upon us nowadays.
That is not what this is about. No. It is about the War in the Pacific IN DETAIL. As such, it covers battles that even I had never heard of before..particulary all the naval battles in the Guadacanal/Bougainville theater plus the War in the Northern Pacific which is almost always neglected. Macarthur's advance up the Asian coast---another neglected subject is given multiple episodes. There is a great deal of footage especially in New Guinea that I had never seen before. I was also quite amazed to learn in the ep concerning Japan's surrender just how much territory Japan still controlled and how many armies she was still fielding. From Wake Island to Malaya from China to the Philipines where the Japanese were still holding out in Sept, 1945!! Man if it was not for the Bomb, World War Two would most certainly extended into 1946 and at Lord knows the cost in lives. And so much for modern armchair strategists who claim they oppossed the Iraqi front because we had not "secured" the Afghanistan(and again the Philipines) fronts first. If the US had done that in the Pacific, we would still have been fighting in the Solomons in 1946!!
Quibbles. While the doc devotes an entire ep to the air war against Japan up to and including Hiroshima, it does not mention Nagasaki. Also the DVD set that I viewed(put out by Madacy) seemed to be missing at least one ep as the ep about Japan's surrender and occupation ends with a teaser about the Soviet Union's attempt to use the post war chaos in Asia as an opportunity to take over. Presumably that ep/s would have covered the Communist aggressions in Malaya, the Philipines, China and Korea. One imagines this must be yet another in the endless examples of the quiet soft censorship in the media of things critical of Communism.
Still, this is another gem from the Golden Age of television. A fine example of the TV doc before PC turned everything into proganda for the Democrat and Communist Parties AND BOTTOM LINE the absolute best doc on the War with Japan. I have never seen better. And I have seen alot.
If interested, this is the one to see.
Recommended.
