The Story We Needed Ken Burns to Tell

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092101507.html

The Story We Needed Ken Burns to Tell

By Cecilia Alvear
Saturday, September 22, 2007; Page A17
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As a Latina, I've unfortunately run across another kind of Ken Burns effect, one that leaves Hispanics largely invisible in those documentaries.

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For " The War," his 14 1/2 -hour PBS series that begins tomorrow, Burns concentrated on how World War II affected the lives of people from Sacramento; Waterbury, Conn.; Mobile, Ala.; and Luverne, Minn.

I recently attended a screening of highlights of "The War." I found it stunning, moving and sadly incomplete. Deftly cutting between the battle lines and the home front, Burns shows the cruelty of war in intimate detail. We see hundreds of bodies floating in the ocean during the Pacific campaign. We see the injustice of a black soldier from Mobile serving his country in a segregated Army. We see law-abiding Japanese Americans herded off to internment camps.

During a segment on the liberation of Nazi death camps, a Jewish American veteran bitterly describes the atrocities he saw there. A woman in the row behind me began sobbing audibly as the film illustrated the veteran's words with shots of emaciated survivors.

Yet nowhere in the powerful original production did Burns include the stories of Latinos affected by the war. As many as half a million Hispanics served in World War II and earned at least 13 Medals of Honor. They returned to a country where they, like blacks, were treated as second-class citizens.

[Chipper Chat]

1. Burns was criticized for leaving out many white musicians in "Jazz"

such as Stan Kenton, the Four Freshmen, Dave Brubeck, and Lambert Hendricks & Ross.
There's just so many hours to tell a story about a broad subject.
But I think I heard where Burns listened to the calls for Hispanic involvement and added some footage to the film.

[abq e streeter]

3. Thought I heard that too, hope its true

Many of brave soldiers brutalized and murdered on the Bataan Death March were from units of the New Mexico National Guard,with many Hispanics among them, and they will never be forgotten here. Never.

[TwilightGardener]

4. Yes--he added footage that will air at the end of some of the episodes. I don't

think he's racist at all, or that he deliberately excluded them--he just didn't start out with racial diversity in mind. He was primarily looking for interesting people and personal stories. I credit him for adding Hispanics to the film, if belatedly. He listened.

[MethuenProgressive]

2. Perhaps this will inspire some Latino film maker?

Burns left huge gaps in his Civil War doc too. Time, as always, is man's master.

[Patiod]

5. They were only 1.3% of the population at the time

According to the census, there were 1,858,027 people categorized as "Hispanic (any race)" in a 1940 U.S. population of 131,669,275 (or 1.3% of the population). That compares to the Hispanic population in 2000 of 35 million out of a total US population of about 281 million, (or about 12% of the population). In comparison, there were 12.8 million people categorized as "Black" in the 1940 census, which translates to 9% of the population at the time.

Certainly, the Hispanic population may have been undercounted, but they still made up a tiny percent of the US population at the time. I have trouble believing that half a million Hispanics served in WWII if there were only 1.8 million in the U.S. at the start of the war, but since I have no idea what % of other ethnic groups served, it's hard to compare.

Then again, one of my friends is Cuban and a Civil War fanatic, and damned if he didn't find a Cuban who fought at Gettysburg (and how many Cubans were there in the US in 1860?), so who knows.

[BornagainDUer]

6. I saw some of the first episode last night and they had a number of Latinos

on the show.

I agree that this documentary is grossly inadequate in covering the causes of war.

[yellerpup]

7. I don't know if this was regional, but Latinos were

featured prominently in the New York Remembers the War segment following the main documentary feature. Two Puerto Ricans (male and female) and two Latino men from the West Coast spoke eloquently of their service and sacrifice.