Midway through the first hour of Band of Brothers， HBO’s 2001 mini-series about a company of paratroopers during and after 1)D-Day， there’s a scene on a troop ship that’s 2)jam-packed with new recruits on their way to hard fighting in the European 3)theater. “Right now some lucky bastard’s headed for the South Pacific，” one soldier says to another， envious.
Now comes The Pacific， an HBO mini-series by 4)Steven Spielberg， Tom Hanks and the rest of the Band of Brothers crew that spends 10 5)grueling hours and almost $200 million showing just how inaccurate that newbie’s idyllic image was. The series follows three real-life Marines from Pearl Harbor to homecoming after 6)V-J Day. There are battles against well-fortified enemies on small islands. There are 7)heroic deaths and random ones； 8)unrelenting rainstorms， tropical diseases， nervous breakdowns.
That whole story was of a war that many Americans could not fully visualize， then and now. The 9)pivotal moments of the European war featured 10)locales people had heard of and been to—the bombing of London， the liberation of Paris， and so on—and there was a central 11)villain， Hitler， who was known to all. As in Band of Brothers， the enemy is a 12)remote， mostly 13)dehumanized 14)presence—or a15)charging， immediate one that the 16)complicit viewer is only too happy to see shot down， blown up， or stabbed clean through. But the troops sent to try to stop the Japanese from taking over the South Pacific were， for the most part， going to obscure islands.
How obscure？ Before 1940 17)Guadalcanal， site of the first major Allied initiative， had been mentioned by name in The New York Times only about a half-dozen times. Mr. Hanks confessed that he knew nothing about 18)Peleliu before beginning work on The Pacific.
“All of us knew we had to do the whole war，” Mr. McKenna， the writer， said； this would not be a simple story of a single battle. Eventually the decision was made to focus on three members of the First Marine Division： Eugene B. Sledge and Robert Leckie， both 19)privates， and 20)Sergeant John Basilone， who earned the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal. Mr. Leckie and Mr. Sledge， who both died in 2001， wrote memoirs that became cornerstones for the series； Sergeant Basilone’s story was well documented in the news media at the time.