Whose War Is It Anyway?: Ken Burns’ The War and American Popular Memory

Since the US launched military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq during the first decade of the twenty-first century, it seems that nearly everyone has had something to say about the Second World War. But efforts to understand the very essence of the war and the war’s meaning have tended to tighten their grip on the American public with an ever-increasing intensity. Scholars and pundits alike have described the episode as “The Good War” and American citizens who lived through its destructive force as “The Greatest Generation.” But directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick simply refer to the cataclysmic event as “The War.” Over the past two decades, Burns has worked diligently to capture American history on film through memorable documentaries such as The Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz. And in a soul-stirring and often harrowing seven-part documentary film series, the filmmaker once again attempts to recapture America’s past by exploring the Second World War and its intrinsic meaning through the experiences of everyday men and women who lived in selected towns and cities scattered across the American landscape.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Burns boldly points out World War II was more of a necessity rather than a “Good War.” Examining four towns—Sacramento, California, Waterbury, Connecticut, Mobile, Alabama, and Luverne, Minnesota, The War uses interviews, memoirs, historic film footage, Life magazine still photographs, propaganda films, music, radio, and motion pictures from the period in an attempt to provide us with a panoramic view of the Second World War. Moving from Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, from Bataan to North Africa, from Tarawa to Anzio, and from Omaha Beach to Iwo Jima, and finally, from Berlin to Hiroshima, the camera dramatically illuminates the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefront and the home front, conveying an incessant message that “the Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any accounting.” But most of all, Burns allows his viewers to see the war through the eyes of some of the towns’ lesser known participants including Katherine and Sidney Phillips, Quentin Aanenson, Sascha Weinzheimer, and John Gray as well as some of the more prominent spokespeople who resided outside of the towns and cities but have shared their recollections of the period elsewhere like Paul Fussell, Samuel Hynes, and Daniel Inouye. At great length, the witnesses have recounted the human costs that the war exacted on civilians and soldiers, often disclosing awe-inspiring and tragic stories. But through the pursuit of its main objective—providing its viewers with a finely textured, multileveled, kaleidoscopic perspective of the war, The War frequently points up its greatest failing.

Episode one: “A Necessary War” opens with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the war. Early in the segment, Alabama residents Sidney Phillips and Glenn Frazier recall how the coming of the war and their decisions to enlist in the Marines held dire consequences not only for themselves but also for their families. Corporal Frazier’s testimony is especially poignant because after arriving in the Philippines in early 1942, he and hundreds of other servicemen found themselves locked in a desperate struggle to defend the islands against the Japanese onslaught only to be forced to surrender after the fall of Corregidor. Shortly afterwards, Frazier vividly describes the Bataan Death March and the severe punishment that the Japanese soldiers meted out on him as well as his fellow prisoners of war. Phillips’ recollections of the stages of the war were no less compelling. After undergoing a brief stint of stateside training, Phillips and hundreds of other soldiers were assigned to the South Pacific in June 1942 where they engaged the Japanese army in months of fierce fighting on Guadalcanal. But Burns also describes the sacrifices endured by American civilians both abroad and at home, unveiling the rankest forms of brutality and fear unleashed by war. Memories of the impact of the Japanese capture of...