Wow! Ken Burns did a great job explaining the events leading up to the war tonight. He quietly reminded us that the US didn't want to get into war as we were recovering from the Great Depression. He also showed it was a very tough battle in the Pacific, we didn't win for almost a year and when we did, it was the first defeat for the Japanese in 350 YEARS. He showed that war is not a politically correct exercise, sometimes war causes the good guys to, looking from the outside, do very bad things in a fit of retaliation or just for survival.
Another interesting note that The War covered was the politics, yes even during WW2 Roosevelt had to deal with upcoming elections. Roosevelt relented in invading Europe first and instead went with the British plan to invade North Africa. This was to show the citizens that we were finally doing something, the Japanese attack did a lot more damage than the public was lead to believe. Americans were beginning to wonder what, where and when we were going to answer the declarations of war from the Axis nations. What we know now is how ill prepared we were for the coming war, in the documentary it stated that our military force was smaller than Romania's with only 170,000 by the end of the war 5 million Americans served.
It's something you should watch, its on PBS for the next week or so, I believe there is 6 episodes.
