From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Ken Burns Returns to War
His 14 1/2-hour documentary debuts on PBS next week.
NEW YORK--"It's one of the greatest stories of World War II never told." After making critically acclaimed documentaries for more than two decades, Ken Burns at age 54 understands how to draw the attention even of those who think they know all they need to know about a topic. On a recent visit to The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, he was in top form.
"The story of Joseph Medicine Crow," Mr. Burns said, "is something I've wanted to tell for 20 years." The grandson of a scout for Gen. George Armstrong Custer, Mr. Crow fought his way across Europe with the U.S. Army. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he returned to Lodge Grass, Mont., started to tell tales from the battlefield, and then learned that he'd done what probably no Crow would ever do again: He'd met all four criteria necessary to become a Plains Indian "war chief."
Mr. Burns counts those criteria off on his fingers: touch a living enemy soldier; disarm an enemy; lead a successful war party; and steal an enemy's horse. Mr. Crow had managed the first three, in part, because he had run headlong into a German soldier as he rounded a corner in a small village in Germany. The collision knocked the German's weapon to the ground. Mr. Crow lowered his own weapon and the two fought hand-to-hand. In the end Mr. Crow got the best of the German, grabbing him by the neck and choking him. He was going to kill the German soldier on the spot when the man screamed out "momma." Mr. Crow then let him go.
Joseph Medicine Crow's opportunity to make off with an enemy's horse came along when a contingent of mounted German soldiers was positioned in front of Mr. Crow's unit. In a daring night raid, he slipped behind enemy lines, quickly tied a bridle with a strand of rope, mounted one of the horses and stampeded the others. As he rode off, he sang a traditional Crow song.
Mr. Crow--now in his 90s--is one of the more than four-dozen people who tell their stories in "The War," a new 14 1/2-hour documentary miniseries on World War II; directed and produced by Mr. Burns and Lynn Novick, it will debut on PBS next week. But Mr. Crow nearly missed having his story told in "The War": After the film was nearly done, there were complaints that the documentary didn't include enough Hispanics. More of their stories were put in, and given the opportunity to extend the film, Mr. Burns added Mr. Crow's as well.
Mr. Burns is one of the most well-known and influential documentary makers in American film history. "The Civil War," his 11-hour epic released in 1990, remains the most viewed documentary in PBS history. An estimated 39 million people tuned in to watch at least one of its episodes. For more than a quarter-century, Mr. Burns has made more than a dozen other films. His first, 1981's hourlong "Brooklyn Bridge," helped cement his reputation within PBS as a filmmaker who can make history accessible to a broad viewing public. In the years that followed, he made films on a wide variety of topics, including the Statue of Liberty--which focused on personal stories of immigration and assimilation--and the American-born art form of jazz. Throughout his career, he had the goal of telling the story of the U.S. and its people. "I've been making the same film" over and over, he told me.
But his success has come at a personal price. "The Civil War" minted his reputation, but spending years poring over individual, tragic stories of the millions of people caught up in the bloody and protracted military conflict left him emotionally spent.
Mr. Burns spent the next decade creating films but resisting pressure to make a World War II documentary. In the summer before the devastating terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, however, something came across the transom that changed his mind. The Veterans Administration estimated that 1,000 World War II veterans were dying every day. "I'm in the memory business," he said while visiting the Journal. "When a [veteran] dies without his story being told, that's like a library burning down." Earlier this month, Mr. Burns phoned me from Mobile, Ala., and told me another reason he decided to make "The War." He feels a "huge pang of regret" for not asking his own father, who died in October 2001, more about what the war generation had gone through. "Dad, damn it, come back and tell me more," he said.
Some 16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. More than 400,000 would die in combat. Battles took place throughout the Pacific, North Africa and Europe. And, at home, the large mobilization effort remade the U.S. "War towns" boomed just about overnight, as the defense industry geared up to churn out the planes, tanks and ships needed in our war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
It's probably impossible to make a definitive documentary about an event that touched nearly everyone on the globe, and "The War" doesn't attempt that feat. Instead, it largely focuses on telling the stories of Luverne, Minn.; Mobile, Ala.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Waterbury, Conn.--those of the people who headed off to foreign battlefields and the vast majority who didn't. "The War" devotes more than a quarter of its time to the home front, where viewers will see Mobile and Sacramento expand so rapidly that there weren't enough beds for all of the new residents flooding in to take defense jobs. And where the Waterbury mother of a dead soldier lets out a wail the whole neighborhood seems to hear. "It gets to the idea that we're emotional archaeologists," Mr. Burns told me.
To make this film, Mr. Burns, Ms. Novick and dozens of others at Florentine Films--the production company Mr. Burns co-founded not long after graduating from college in 1975--interviewed hundreds of people who either lived through the war or had a direct connection to relatives who did. The process, Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick explain, was organic. In some cases, they found people by placing ads in local newspapers. Many came to their attention through word of mouth. And a few were locally well known, so the producers sought them out.
The film makes clear that World War II was a "necessary war" in which the U.S. was unquestionably on the right side, but one that nonetheless came at a steep price. And that price, as in every bloody military conflict, was paid in two ways. Families at home suffered from the loss of their loved ones. And those on the front lines witnessed--even meted out--brutality they never would have imagined before the war. For example, one U.S. Marine--to the horror of his comrades--robbed a wounded Japanese soldier, using a knife to pry loose his gold teeth.
Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com.
