"The War"
A World Without War: March 1945 - September 1945 (2007)

Directors:

Ken Burns (co-director)
Lynn Novick (co-director)

TV Series:

"The War" (2007)

Original Air Date:

2 October 2007 (Season 1, Episode 7)

Genre:

Documentary | War

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

WWII | Interview | Archive Footage

Cast

Maurice Bell	...	Himself
Olga Ciarlo	...	Herself
Keith David	...	Narrator (voice)
Tom Hanks	...	Al McIntosh (voice)
Sam Hynes	...	Himself
Daniel Inouye	...	Himself
Ray Leopold	...	Himself
Dwain Luce	...	Himself
Burnett Miller	...	Himself
Emma Belle Pelcher	...	Herself
Katharine Phillips	...	Herself
Joseph Vaghi	...	Himself

Certification:

USA:TV-14

Soundtrack:

Paper Doll

Incredibly-Powerful Finale To This Series

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This final episode of the series has some of the most horrific stories and pictures of the entire series. It almost leaves you numb after watching it.

The first stunning sight you see in this final episode is all the ships - in all sizes - lined up to do battle for the island of Okinawa. The United States had about 1,500 ships and almost a half million men ready to try to take the island, which was considered "the gateway to Japan," the last obstacle in the way to mainland Japan. What an awesome sight to see all those ships in the water - incredible! On the other side, in addition to the dug-in ground troops, the Japanese had at least 500 kamikaze pilots ready to sacrifice their own lives and dive into the ships, killing as many Americans as possible. The final death toll in here, on both sides, is staggering.

The next big event was the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, which stunned the nation. For many younger people, he had been the only President they knew about. It turns out half the people interviewed right after his death had no idea who the new President was (Truman)!

Then comes the victory over Germany but the unbelievably-horrendous discovery of the "death camps," the "concentration camps" where six million Jews and many others - were starved to death and destroyed in ovens or piled up like stacks of wood. I don't have to say how bad some of these scenes looked.

Then, we hear about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, being sunk in the Pacific with thousands of soldiers dying and trying to survive in the waters only to be attacked in droves by sharks who ate them. It's incredibly frightening just to hear these accounts. A distress signal went ignored because the U.S. thought it was a Japanese trick. A survivor describes being in the water for four days and five nights and how some men literally went out of their minds, but 300 did somehow make it when rescuers finally came.

Not too long afterward, the atomic bomb is delivered and put on the B-29 bomber, the "Enola Gay," and is dropped on Hiroshima, with 40,000 people instantly dying. The Japanese still won't surrender so another is dropped in Nagasaki. I didn't know there were no more, that it would take 2-3 months to make another bomb. Thankfully, the Japanese didn't know that either and so, finally, they surrendered. Some of the images of the burned victims continue to make this episode a tough one to watch.

Some of the scenes and stories of the celebrations of the end of the war, the "boys" finally coming home, some in caskets, will bring tears to your eyes. The reaction Glen Frazier got on the phone, since his family had been told earlier that their son was dead, was incredible.

One can only imagine the nightmares these soldiers had for years.