Interview with Tom Hanks
Q: What is THE PACIFIC about?
TOM HANKS: 'The Pacific' is a view of the war that offers a
completely different perspective than what we've seen in war
stories set in Europe; the experience of the soldiers fighting
these wars was as different as the areas in which they
fought.
Everyone is familiar with the war in Europe and the glamour which
has been associated with it, but the war in the Pacific was savage
and brutal and fought on unfamiliar territories, across the far sea
on tiny little dots of land that the fighting men couldn't even
pronounce.
The soldiers being shipped off to Europe were going to a somewhat
familiar place, even if they'd never been there before. Going to
the Pacific was going off into a mystery, an absolute question
mark, a place that they had never been to or even been able to
imagine. And therefore, it is a very different perspective on what
they experienced and what they were like when they came back.
The soldiers' mindset was different as well. Because we were
fighting the Japanese, an enemy who had attacked us, who viewed us
as being genetically inferior to them, and who in one fell swoop
had taken over almost a quarter of the world, our military went
there to take vengeance, get retribution and reverse Japanese
aggression.
The physical experience was different between the two theatres of
war. Getting to the Pacific was a much longer and more arduous
journey. The fighting itself seemed endless. You don't get to hop
on a train seven weeks after the battle is over and enjoy rest and
relaxation in, say, Piccadilly Circus or on the Champs-Elysees. You
got to play volleyball, maybe, and see a movie, and sleep a little
bit longer, on an island that looks very much like the one that you
just fought for.
Here's an example of what your average soldier would see. In
Europe, he saw paved streets, churches, banks and buildings. He saw
houses that were not unlike the houses and churches and streets of
the town where he came from. In the Pacific, there were raw
beaches. There were primeval forests. There were rain forests or
sun-baked coral atolls. In some cases, there were no real
structures whatsoever, but just grass huts, houses made of wood and
paper, and bamboo bridges. It was an alien environment to these
guys and completely unfamiliar.
Q: Would you set up the story of the three main
Marines?
TH: Well, we used different source materials for our story. We had
the story of John Basilone, which is well-documented and easy to
follow. We had the books of Eugene Sledge: With the Old Breed and
China Marine. We had the book that Robert Leckie wrote, Helmet for
My Pillow. And we had Red Blood, Black Sand, which Charles Tatum
wrote.
The miniseries focuses on three guys Eugene Sledge, Robert Leckie
and John Basilone. Each of them gives a very different perspective
of what it was like to join the Marines and to fight in the
Pacific.
John Basilone had served in the Army for four years before
returning to civilian life, and he could see that war was coming,
so he joined the Marines because he wanted to be with the outfit
that was going to be in first.
Robert Leckie, not long out of high school, was working as a
newspaperman when he enlisted with the Marines.
And then you have Eugene Sledge, who was 18 years old. Much to his
dismay, he couldn't sign up immediately because he had a heart
condition and his surgeon father wouldn't let him. So we
followed these three guys and their very different perspectives,
from December of 1941, deep into 1946.
The question we ask in 'The Pacific' is not so much How
did they do it?, but Why did they do it? We didn't just want to say
what happened; we want to show the underlying effects. What we ask
is: How did they come back? How were they able to go through all of
this and come back in 1946 for the first time and just get on with
their lives? It was hideously difficult for all of them.
Now this is the generation that didn't talk about their
experiences. They didn't go on the Oprah Winfrey show. They didn't
use concepts like closure. And yet, a lot of their memoirs are
searing and they are riveting.
I can't help but wonder how they returned to normal lives after
their ordeal in the Pacific? How did these guys in 1952 set up a
Christmas tree for their kids? How did they in 1959 stop by and see
that there was a new place to buy cheeseburgers in their home town?
How did they pick up their lives and put on a tie and go back to
either school or go back to a job, making a living, having a
family, without cracking up?
War is hideous, yet there is something that is very human about it
that makes you want to be a part of it. And there is something that
is horrifying about it that makes you want to flee and never have
to take part in it.
The unifying aspect of it all is what it did to its participants.
How can you survive Guadalcanal or Peleliu or Okinawa? How can
those guys do what they did and be expected to come back to a world
where you just move on with things? I think that's what The Pacific
does more than anything else. It's because we have the records of
the men themselves.
It is extraordinary that Eugene Sledge came home as he did and
lived as he did. It's extraordinary that our characters Hoosier and
Runner and Burgin and Snafu all these guys went off and lived very,
very complicated lives. And let's not pretend it was easy for any
of these guys. It was very difficult, but they did it. I cant
imagine any human being going through a greater struggle than what
these guys did on Peleliu.
Q: How did this project come about, after Band of
Brothers?
TH: We all felt, I think, after Band of Brothers that we had
covered Part A of World War II: Version 1.0, and there was still
Version 2.0 out there. It was Steven Spielberg who, at one point,
asked, 'Is there any way we could do the Pacific?' And we had to
ask ourselves, 'What's the story?' because we didn't want to make
up things or redo things that had been done before.
If we could find the source material, we might be able to let it
speak for itself. We told Dick Winters, who was Captain Winters of
Easy Company in the 506, the lead character in Band of Brothers,
that we were looking into Eugene Sledge's book. Sledge is a legend,
he told us.
Then we found the other books, researched other materials and
conducted interviews with various veterans eventually putting the
whole thing together to make The Pacific.
