I just finished watching the latest HBO Mini Series called The Pacific. It’s made by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, the same people who did Band of Brothers years ago. I remember Band of Brothers and how I would catch it every week on TV. I think it was twice a week when they aired it.
Both Band of Brothers and The Pacific were mini-series about the American side of World War 2. While Band of Brothers covered to war in Europe against the Germans, the recent mini-series The Pacific covered the war between the USA and Japan on the Pacific islands. I typically like movies or TV shows based on modern times. I don’t like all those movies with horses and carriages or anything even older than that. I do somehow have a peculiar interest in Modern History. Especially World War 2.
I don’t know what it is that fascinates me about it. Maybe it’s just the fact that it was probably the largest war that involved the most number of countries the world has ever seen or the stories behind it. TV Shows like The Pacific gives us a glimpse of how the war was like. How it took a toll from the soldiers on the battlefield to the families that wait for them at home. You also get a glimpse of how war changes men. How it pushes even the hardest people to the physical and mental limits. And how… it also forces boys in the army to grow quickly to men.
When I see things like that I think of how lucky we are in these times. My generation has never seen a war *touch wood*. We’ve never had to enlist in the army to fight for the survival of the country we love. So when I watch or read about World War 2 I think of how lucky I am.
I also think about how people were able to do what they did. How soldiers or people in general were brainwashed to the extent that they were able to massacre mass numbers of innocent people. From the jews in the concentration camps to the Chinese in Nanking. It really makes you wonder you know. If people back then could be brainwashed, could we today be too.
Every time I meet someone who lived through World War 2, I can’t help but ask how it was like.
Once in London I met this really old man while playing table tennis in this community court. I learned that he served in World War 2 in the British army so I asked him what it was like. He told me he was one of the “intelligence officers” that were specialized in “fooling” the enemy. So what they did for example was put up rubber tanks and fake tents etc etc so that when the German spy planes took pictures from the air, they looked like the entire Allied army was there. He told me they were so successful in what they did that even when the Allied forces invaded Omaha Beach, the Germans kept thinking that they were going to land on some other beach so they concentrated most of their forces elsewhere.
I asked him then if he knew any of the people who really fought on the ground and he told me about friends he had lost. Friends who had lost limbs to explosives, friends to even had gone deaf because a mortar exploded right next to them. He told me how even those that made it back safely without any physical injury suffered from mental stress of the war and were never the same again. All this.. was depicted in The Pacific.
Then some two years ago when I was in Tokyo I had met one of my father’s old Japanese friends. He had lived through World War 2. I asked him how it was like and he told me how right after Japan surrendered, the Russians in the north were kidnapping Japanese back to Russia to use as slaves. The Americans who arrived however were bringing aid and food for civilians. It was because of things like that, that the Japanese were really afraid when the Russians wanted a part of northern Japan. They were relieved though, when the USA decided not to give up any of Japan to the Russians because it was the Americans that fought the Pacific war, not the Russians.
He then told me how poor Japan was after the war. How they were so poor that he had to donate blood regularly just to earn enough money to buy food. He told me of how the people of Japan were determined to build their country back and had worked hard to do so. He somehow said that it was a feeling that he felt the young people in Japan today didn’t have.
War is horrible. I hope we will never see another World War in our lifetimes. Watch the Pacific if you can. It’s a great series. Here’s the trailer of it.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space