Ken Burns Pays Homage to the War Heroes of the Greatest Generation
Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns’ new documentary on World War II will air Sunday night on PBS. Just as Steven Spielberg was alarmed at the passing of so many Holocaust survivors, so was Burns alarmed at the passing of WW II veterans: 1,000 per day.
Unlike most war documentaries, The War will not be told from the mouths of generals and politicians but from the men fighting on the ground, or, as Burns calls it, from the “bottom up.” “And that means if you weren’t in this war, or you weren’t waiting anxiously for somebody to come back from this war, you’re not in our film,” says Burns.
Burns drew from four small and middle-sized American towns, and one of them was Mobile, Alabama. He tells the story of Glenn Frazier, a Fort Deposit native who enlisted at age 16 to escape some minor trouble at home. With distancing himself from his hometown troubles the main thing on his mind, Frazier had no idea the horrible places the war would take him: on the Bataan Death March and fighting for survival for 3 1/2 years in a Japanese POW camp.
APT viewing details
Episodes 1-4: Sunday, September 23 - Wednesday, September 26, 7:00 p.m.
Episodes 5-7: Sunday, September 30 - Tuesday, October 2, 7:00 p.m.
A sneak peek at The War
Alabamian Glenn Frazier talks about his near execution in a POW camp
Read about Glenn Frazier and other Mobile residents interviewed in The War.
Alabamian Glenn Frazier talks about his near execution in a POW camp
Read about Glenn Frazier and other Mobile residents interviewed in The War.
Reserve a copy of the companion book The War: An Intimate History, 1941 - 1945.
Ken Burns is one busy man. Check out his other interests: baseball, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Civil War, Congress, Frank Lloyd Wright, American radio and automobile travel, jazz music, Huey Long, Mark Twain, Lewis & Clark, Negro League baseball, the Shakers, the Statue of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson, and the wild, wild, West.
Phew.
Comments
I would like to know if you have thought about the kids that grew up with these HEROES? Six of use lived through there silence. Coming away with PSSD. My Dad was in special forces 82nd Air Bourne, Only 3 came home. He just could not live with the things he had to do. Jumping behind enamy lines to blow up bridges, ammo, killing women and kids on those bridges, laying under three dead Germans for 3 days (they did't bury their own) and carring pills to kill yourself because you could not be taken prisoner. He suffered inside and made all of us suffer.