A Necessary War

S1, E1: Episode 1: After an overview of the Second World War, which engulfed the world from 1939 to 1945 and cost at least 50 million lives, inhabitants of four towns - Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota - recall their communities on the eve of the conflict. For them, the events overseas seem far away. Their tranquil lives are shattered by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and America is thrust into the great cataclysm. Along with millions of other young men, Sid Phillips and Willie Rushton of Mobile, Ray Leopold of Waterbury and Walter Thompson and Burnett Miller of Sacramento enter the armed forces. In the Philippines, two Americans, Corporal Glenn Frazier and Sascha Weinzheimer (who was eight years old in 1941), are caught up in the Japanese onslaught there, as American and Filipino forces retreat onto Bataan while thousands of civilians are rounded up and imprisoned in Manila. Viewer discretion is advised. This film contains profanity and scenes of graphic violence.