The Pacific (Tom Hanks & Steven Spielberg)

[kiwithrottlejockey]

A full-page colour advertisment in today's Sunday Magazine (that comes with the Sunday Star Times newspaper) is announcing that the TV series, “The Pacific” is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD from The Warehouse, JB Hi-Fi, Whitcoulls and Marbecks.

I think I might have to head down to The Warehouse in Masterton this afternoon to grab a copy of it.

I loved the TV series, although I missed a couple of episodes at the end, so I'm looking foward to catching up with the entire series.

I've already got “Band of Brothers” on DVD.

[kb]

IMHO Pacific is the best war movie/series ever shown. For possibly the first time we saw the full gamut. The effect on the people, how they behaved on R & R, realistic fighting scenes, some idea of the home scene and no glorification. My only gripe if it was that, was that they didn't make it clear that the Marines were defending such a small perimeter at Guadalcanal. Bonus points also from my point of view for giving coverage to our area of the Pacific War.
!
Band of Brothers was excellent also but didn't have such a broad coverage. BTW, they really were a Band of Brothers. After the war they still really looked after each other emotionally and financially despite the fact that some were mult millionaires and others were labourers.

[corsair67]

I don't know about pricing in NZ, but if over here is anything to go by, shop around a bit.

I have seen The Pacific" series advertised here from anywhere between AUD$44 up to around AUD$85!

[Dave Homewood]

My sister saw The Pacific DVD set (in a tin apparently) the other day at the Warhouse for $65. Out of my price range for the time being I'm afraid. Although it is one month till my birthday...

Does it have any extras in the set?

Keith, I totally agree with you about The Pacific, it was far and away the best film ever made about the Pacific War, showing all the levels of reality. The gritty realism portrayed, the acting, the locations and set dressing, the fear and terror, the madness, the confusion, it was perfectly conducted.

The great news is that the writer, Bruce Mckenna, who wrote on both Band of Brothers and The Pacific projects, is now reported to be writing a new miniseries on the Battle of Midway.

[corsair67]

Dave, I notice The Warehouse is advertising "The Pacific" for NZ$49.99 on their online site until the 9th November. It does say this is an online price, so it may be more instore?

I'm guessing there would be another $5 or so for postage as well?

www.thewarehouse.co.nz/red/catalog/product/The-Pacific?SKU=1475388

I bought myself a copy today at Big W, so I'm looking forward to watching it at some stage soon. I only watched about 20mins or so when Seven broadcast it here, as the ad breaks drove me up the wall, and I'd thought I'd rather bide my time until it came out on dvd.

[Dave Homewood]

Mate, I am certain you're going to love it. Especially the Corsairs. The discussion here at he time about the Corsairs bombing with their wheels down was something I never knew before and thanks to that I have now been able to discuss it further with actual Corsair pilots who said they definately bombed targets with the wheeles down like that, which was cool.

I shall tell the family about that good Warehouse price. They can all chip in for my birthday I'm sure.

My Mum used to hate war films till my sister made her watch Band of Brothers last year and she was totally hooked. That was just before The Pacific was released and when that was shown she thought it was amazing. There is something about the way Mr Hanks and Mr Spielberg and their amazing crew make these programmes that appeal to a much wider audience than the usual target. For example there was no way either Mum or my sisters were going to watch Generation Kill, or stuff like that.

[corsair67]

For example there was no way either Mum or my sisters were going to watch Generation Kill, or stuff like that.

What about "Passchendaele"? ;D

[Dave Homewood]

I haven't offered that to them to watch yet but I suspect Mum might give it a go.

[corsair67]

My only potential problem with "The Pacific" is that I just want to jump straight into Peleliu and Okinawa first, to see Sledgehammer in action!

Must resist the temptation and watch them in the order they were meant to be watched in.

[Dave Homewood]

There is plenty of great Leckie and Basilone action before then to watch.

[ErrolC]

Nov 7, 2010 22:52:31 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I haven't offered that to them to watch yet but I suspect Mum might give it a go.

How about 'A Very Long Engagement"? It's a love story, honest!

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Well....I got my copy of The Pacific (in a tin) from The Warehouse yesterday.

I also saw several other things on DVD that I desired, so ended up spending more money than I had intended to. However, I've got lots of “rainy day” stuff to watch now.

I watched the first episode of The Pacific last night. It was very hard to resist also watching the second episode, but I had to start work at 4:30am, so ended up using a lot of willpower to go to bed instead.

[Dave Homewood]

Does it have any extras in the set?

[corsair67]

Watched the first two episodes tonight, and have to say that I really enjoyed them both.

The scenes from the attack by the Japanese at Alligator Creek were in my opinion extremely well done, and seemed to recreate the aftermath of the battle very well.

Also, the actor who plays Eugene Sledge is a pretty good choice for the role, as he looks a lot like the young 'Sledgehammer' from what I have seen of images of him during the war.

Dave, from what I can see over here there seem to be different things that are offered as extras in the dvd set. My copy came with an extra disc about the Battle of Peleliu, but one other store here includes a booklet of images from the movie.

There are of course, extras included in the set anyway - backgrounds to the battles and characters, etc.

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks Craig, maybe the different extras is the reason why you've seen wildly different prices. I hate it when they do that and you don't know which is the best set to buy.

The Alligator Creek attack scene is, I have read, very accurate and yet there were people moaning on various forums after that episode aired moaning that the film makers should have had it in daylight so you could see what was going on. Bloody numpties.

Can you imagine how scary that would be to be plonked into a dangerous jungle, being tired, sore, probably ill, and then have to defend through the night against wave after wave of attackers coming out of the darkness, and all you can see is their tracer and hear is their screams. Bloody brave men. This sort of fighting was still going on when No. 3 (GR) Squadron RNZAF first arrived at Cactus, and not too far from their runway and camps. if those Marine lines had been broken and the Japanese got back Henderson Field, we would probably have lost the Pacific war.

[strikemaster]

Its incredible to think how close the Japanese got. The more I think about it the more I wonder what the hell was going on in NZ then. The Aussies were recalled from Europe to fight in PNG etc and the NZ army was left in NA/Italy.

There was one major NZ pacific conflict (on the ground) iirc, the Treasury islands, Vella Lavella? I have been trying to find more info on that but there isn't a lot around.

The Solomons are VERY close and as you say if they had taken Henderson we would have been in deep doo doo.

[Peter Lewis]

Stand on one of the beaches along the north Queensland coast and look east out to sea.
That's how close they got to invading Australia.
I have stood there and thought that.

My mother still talks of the palpable sense of relief of being in Auckland's Queen Street and seeing the US soldiers marching up the street after disembarking. They knew they were saved when the Yanks arrived.
Before that, it was just old men and boys with broomsticks.

[yak2]

Sure were interesting times. The battles of Midway and Coral Sea certainly fixed the Jap navy, but never forget Milne Bay and Kokoda. First WW2 defeat of the Japanese in a land battle.
I am sure the US had a self interest in fighting to save Australia and NZ from invasion. But it cost them dearly, and deserves our eternal gratitude and support as allies.

[Dave Homewood]

The reason the New Zealand Division was not brought home was because Churchill and the British commanders felt they could not do without them, with the already significant loss of the Australians. A deal was struck to keep the kiwis fighting in North Africa (Italy came later, October 1943 onwards) which saw the US Marine Division sent to NZ to cover our defences while they trained, rather than risk losing North Africa altogether. Our troops were among the best in the desert war.

While the Third Division of the 2nd NZEF in the Pacific were not very well used in the scope of island invasions, the RNZAF punched well above its weight with 13 fighter squadrons, a dive bomber squadron, two medium bomber squadrons, seven General Reconnaissance/Bomber Reconnaissance squadrons, flying boat squadrons and all the back up to these such as repair depots, assembly units, hospitals, recreation centres, stores and maintenance units, etc. The RNZAF did exceedingly well.

The Royal New Zealand Navy also punched well above its weight with ships attached to US Navy fleets, ships attached to the British Pacific Fleet, ships in the many convoys keeping the war going, and not to mention the significant effort of the New Zealanders in the Fleet Air Arm, who made up 1/4 of all flyers in the British Pacific Fleet carrier squadrons.

And kiwis also fought in some specialist commando units such as Z Force and No. 1 (Fiji) Commando, the latter of which was at the forefront of the jungle fighting alongside and often ahead of the US Marines and Army.

The Japanese did actually invade Australia by the way. They landed hundreds of men in a remote area in the top end of Northern Territory, but I cannot recall the place. They were there to set up a base camp but it was so hot and arrid and terrible and lacking in food and fresh water that even the heartiest of Japan's soldiers could not take it, and eventually after some time the survivors who didn't die during their stay pulled out and went home. The Bush Tucker Man did a brilliant episode on it, pointing out that if only they'd eaten this and that they could have been alright. I was amazed when i watched that a few years back as I never knew they got that far but the BTM never lies, he's a bloody great historian and was an Aussie Army officer himself.

The actual official Japnese plans for their move south was to take PNG (the fleet sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea was headed to there to land on the eastern end and cut off the Aussies and Yanks fighting there. They were then to springboard from there down to New Zealand. They had the NZ Japanese occupation currency all printyed for distribution, and they had NZ maps all in Japanese (there's one on the wall next to the Zero in Auckland War Memorial Museum). They would have walked through NZ (in their plan, maybe not so easy in practice as we had Vildebeests!) and then from there they'd have both cut off vital food to Britain from NZ, cut the vital shipping lanes to Aussie, and then would have mounted an invasion of Australia from NZ. So they say.

Maybe though they were like all foreigners who think you can cross the Tasman by ferry in an hour...

[kb]

Strikemaster, IMO the best book about the our army ops in the Pacific on a personal basis is Frank Rennie's "Regular Soldier - A Life in the New Zealand Army". Frank took part in both our major army Pacific ops. Our first job was to take over from the Americans and clear Vella Lavella but the main task was after that when we made an amphibious landing and took Green Island. My uncle was involved in that one. Rennies descriptions are brief but to the point. I don't think many people are aware that the 3rd Division was trained in amphibious ops. The Division was abandoned after that because of a shortage of man power.

I was a little pre school kid when my uncle came back and he left some boxes of .303 ammo in our garage (probably illegally purloined) which I found and had great fun conducting a war with the empty section next door by tossing ammo at the imagined enemy! When about 10 years later the section was cleared and the rubbish burned I had my heart in my mouth but nothing happened. Perhaps my uncle had recovered the ammo. Nothing was ever said to me!