Informal reviews suggest that “Pearl Harbor,” the movie, is a bigger bomb than anything the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan dropped on Oahu way back when.
Too bad, because it can never hurt to remind Americans that they live in a dangerous world – even if it doesn’t always seem that way.
An accurate, dramatically rendered tale of the opening hours of the Pacific war would serve that purpose – and heaven knows there’s a market for it.
How long has Tom Brokaw’s book been on the bestsellers’ lists? Years?
“The Greatest Generation,” of course, doesn’t pretend to be a definitive account of anything. It certainly omits reference to the U.S. submarine war against Japan – arguably the most significant campaign of the Pacific War.
Indeed, it may have been the most remarkable feat of arms that no one’s ever heard of in the history of warfare.
What’s ironic is that Brokaw’s network, NBC, is doing its bit to ensure that nobody ever does hear of it.
Throughout the war, the submarine force never made up more than 2 percent of U.S. Navy personnel – yet it sank almost 45 percent of Japan’s warships and a staggering 80 percent of its merchant fleet.
This came at substantial cost: Fifty-two U.S. submarines were lost during the war, along with 3,505 sailors. This represented fully 20 percent of the submarine force – a casualty rate exceeding that of the Marine Corps.
Virtually every war patrol was an adventure, as a reading of the boats’ official deck logs made clear. And, back in the mid-’50s, NBC used those logs to create a relatively long-running series – “The Silent Service.”
At the time, it was dramatic stuff.
By today’s standards, though, it was cheesy enough: The dialogue was stilted, the plots (though true) predictable, the sets cramped (not surprising, because they weren’t sets at all, but real submarines).
In the event, “The Silent Service” went the way of a lot of early TV: It left barely a trace.
But a couple of years ago, just as Brokaw’s book began its own run, retired submarine electrician’s mate John Clear undertook to resurrect the series – if only for a limited audience.
Clear’s own service began in 1960. Like a lot of young men, he’d been influenced by the films’ implicit adventure – so it was the submarine service for him. (Me, too, for the record.)
Long since retired from the Navy, Clear haunted Internet auction sites and other possible repositories of old episodes – with modest success.
Presently he was selling homemade copies – mostly over the ‘Net. They were of questionable technical quality, to say nothing of dubious production values.
“I sold a couple of hundred copies,” he says. “I didn’t make any money, that’s for sure. One episode, I bought off E-bay for $100. That sort of stuff.”
John Clear, in other words, hadn’t exactly pirated Seinfeld.
So who was buying?
Wrote one customer: “[The tapes] are intended as a birthday gift (Jan. 30) for my father, who served on the USS Bowfin during WWII.” Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation,” in other words.
Enter the lawyers: Clear got a boilerplate “cease and desist” letter from NBC in April, demanding an end to his project. And no doubt the network is on sound legal footing.
But “The Silent Service” chronicled an extraordinary military undertaking and told compelling personal stories in the process. You know, sort of like “The Greatest Generation.”
Brokaw – and, derivatively, NBC – has done very well indeed by that generation.
Now comes Memorial Day.
Time to give something back?
Time to call the network law dogs off John Clear?
That would be the greatest.
