Documentary Series Review: 'The War: A Ken Burns Film'

On September 23, 2007, the 300-plus member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired A Necessary War, the first of seven episodes of The War: A Ken Burns Film. Produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, this 15-hours-long documentary series tells the story of how four American towns – Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Luverne, MN, and Sacramento, CA – and their citizens experienced World War II.

Written by Burns’ long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward (The Civil War, Baseball, Prohibition, and The Vietnam War), The War is a bottom-to-top look at the Second World War as told by now-elderly members of what former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation.” They are a cross-section of American society who experienced “the War” either in far-flung theaters of operation around the world or on the home front back in the States. Their stories – some of which are wryly humorous, and some of which are simply horrifying – reflect The War’s tagline: In extraordinary times, there are no ordinary times.

Here are some of the individuals whose stories form the narrative of The War: A Ken Burns Film:

Sidney Phillips of Mobile, AL,  who enlisted in the Marine Corps on December 8, 1941 at age 17

Katharine Phillips, Sidney’s college-age sister

Daniel Inouye, a 17-year-old Japanese-American resident of Honolulu, HI, who witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and later enlisted in the U.S. Army

Quentin Aanenson, a 20-year-old farmer’s son from Luverne, MN, who joined the U.S. Army Air Force and served in Europe as a P-47 pilot

Robert Kashiwagi, a Nisei (U.S.-born Japanese-American) teenager from Sacramento, CA, who served in Italy with the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team, even as his family lived behind barbed wire in an internment camp in Colorado

John Gray, an African-American resident of Mobile who was drafted into the Army

Sascha Weinzheimer, an 8-year-old American girl who lived with her family in a sugar plantation in the Philippine Islands and the granddaughter of Lou Weinzheimer, a wealthy Sacramento-area landowner and businessman

Al McIntosh, the publisher-editor of Luverne’s Rock County Star Herald

Glenn Frazier, an underage teenager from Ft. Deposit, AL who joins the peacetime Army and volunteers for duty in the Philippines several months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

Their stories, and many others, are told either by the now-elderly eyewitnesses in contemporary on-camera interviews or (in the case of Al McIntosh and Eugene Sledge, who passed away before The War was made) in dramatized readings read by a cast of talented actors that includes Tom Hanks, Kevin Conway, Rebecca Holtz, and Josh Lucas.

And to weave the various’ story arcs into a seamless tapestry that depicts America’s experience in history’s greatest cataclysm,, writer Geoffrey Ward wrote a compelling narrative story that is delivered by the deep voice of narrator Keith David, who had also narrated Burns’ 1994 documentary Baseball.    

(C) 2007, 2012 Florentine Films and PBS Distribution 

As mentioned earlier, The War is divided into seven episodes. They are:

Episode One: “A Necessary War” (December 1941-December 1942)

Episode Two: “When Things Get Tough” (January 1943-December 1943)

Episode Three: “A Deadly Calling” (November 1943-June 1944)

Episode Four: “Pride of Our Nation” (June 1944-August 1944)

Episode Five: “FUBAR” (September 1944-December 1944)

Episode Six: “The Ghost Front” (December 1944-March 1945)

Episode Seven: “A World Without War” (March 1945-December 1945)

The series was broadcast on seven non-consecutive nights in late September and early October of 2007; originally scheduled for a September 16 premiere, a controversy over the series’ omission of the contributions by Americans of Hispanic and Native American heritage delayed the broadcast of “A Necessary War” for a week. Burns and co-director Lynn Novick declined to speak about protests by notable Latino artists – such as Baldo comic strip creator Hector Cantú and his creative collaborator Carlos Castellanos – but when “A Necessary War” premiered, viewers saw an appended mini-episode that highlighted the bravery of Mexican-Americans and other U.S. soldiers of Hispanic descent  during the War. Another mini episode about the heroics of Joe Medicine Crow, a Native American who was the last of his tribe’s “war chiefs” aired later in The War’s seven-night broadcast run.

Original Air Dates:

A Necessary War: September 23, 2007

When Things Get Tough: September 24, 2007

A Deadly Calling: September 25, 2007

Pride of Our Nation: September 26, 2007

FUBAR: September 30, 2007

The Ghost Front: October 1, 2007

A World Without War: October 2, 2007

Like most of Ken Burns’ PBS miniseries, The War’s television presentation was complemented by the publication of a companion book (The War: An Intimate History – 1941-1945) co-written by Burns and historian Geoffrey C. Ward. Additionally, music from the soundtrack – which includes songs and instrumental dance music from the period, a selection of classical pieces chosen mainly for aesthetic reasons, and an original score by music supervisor Wynton Marsalis – was released in a series of four separate recordings. The CDs were available either in a deluxe box set or individual albums published by Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s Legacy and Sony Classical labels.

In addition, PBS Distribution released the series in a six-disc DVD set less than a week after the broadcast of A World Without War. PBS released a six-disc Blu-ray set with more extras, including unreleased interviews and outtakes,  in 2012.

My Take

The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself - its strength and its frailty over the rush of chaos of ongoing events - and we can perceive patterns and themes and motifs.- Ken Burns

I am a World War II buff. I have read dozens, if not hundreds, of books about the War since the 1960s. I have also watched countless movies and documentaries about the bloodiest conflict the world has ever seen, including A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, Patton, The World at War, and Memphis Belle.

I am also a fan of the films by Ken Burns and his production team at Florentine Films. Since 1990, I have seen The Civil War, Jazz, The West, Prohibition, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, The Central Park Five, and most recently, his 10-part epic The Vietnam War.

Needless to say, I watched this documentary when it aired on PBS over a decade ago – and I was impressed by how Burns, his co-director and co-producer Lynn Novick, and historian Geoffrey C. Ward took me on a journey over territory I  thought I knew well already – and still showed me a side of World War II that I had rarely experience outside of books by the late Cornelius Ryan and Stephen E. Ambrose.

Perhaps this “newness” was due to the film’s approach to the narrative. Unlike, say, Jeremy Isaacs’ acclaimed 1974 series The World at War, The War is not a look at the Big Picture of strategy and politics. Whereas the older British import – a classic show in its own right – is told mostly from the perspective of surviving generals, diplomats, mid-level functionaries, and a few veterans and civilian eyewitnesses, The War is the story of average Americans who either served as junior officers and enlisted men in various battle fronts or lived the War years on the home front as defense industry workers, relatives and sweethearts of those who served overseas, and even children who were growing up in, as the series’ tagline says, “extraordinary times.”

As he does in all of his documentaries, Ken Burns captures the essence of what the War was like for Americans from all walks of life and different regions and ethnic groups throughout the U.S. He shows – much to the consternation of some Americans that do not admit the country has flaws – the racism and social injustices faced by African-American and Nisei citizens in 1940s America, a point he drives home throughout the series. In The War, Burns is not afraid to talk about the irony of black Americans being asked to fight against Nazi and Japanese oppression abroad, while they and their relatives faced racial discrimination at home.

But The War also shows the “better angels of our nature,” reflected by the fierce loyalty to the Nation shown by Second Lieutenant Daniel K. Inouye, a Japanese-American GI who was seriously injured in battle while fighting German forces in Northern Italy in 1945. Inouye lost an arm in the service of his country, earned several military awards and medals, including the Medal of Honor, America’s highest decoration for heroism and devotion to duty. After the war, Inouye graduated from law school and, from 1963 to his death in  2012, served his home state of Hawaii as a Democratic Senator in the U.S. Congress.

The War was made, in part, because Ken Burns – who had said he would not make another war-themed documentary after 1990’s The Civil War – became keenly aware that 1,000 World War II veterans die every day in the United States. In addition, many relatives of veterans were sending letters to Burns at Florentine Films, asking him to tell the stories of their parents and grandparents about their wartime experiences. Realizing that these first-hand accounts would be lost forever after the last members of the Greatest Generation pass on, Burns relented and gave viewers an outstanding window into a past that is becoming more distant as time goes by.

And in the nick of time, too. Many of The War’s most eloquent and even popular interviewees, are dead. Former fighter pilot Quentin Aanenson – who also made two World War II documentary films about his experiences in World War II for public TV a decade or so before his appearance here – died a year after The War premiered.

Sidney Phillips, the young Marine corporal who became a well-loved physician in Mobile after his discharge from the service, is also gone. He died in 2011, but not before he became a sought-after memoirist and saw his wartime service exploits dramatized as part of the HBO miniseries The Pacific.

Though – like many productions of this scope – there are a few minor historical inaccuracies in the narrative, The War is one of the best documentaries about the American experience during World War II. Its focus on personal stories – some funny, some darkly tragic, with still others replete with courage, perseverance, and basic human decency – makes The War a worthwhile and profoundly moving experience. It’s television storytelling at its finest.