If the documentarians had second thoughts about showing excerpts and discussing the series before uniformed personnel of all ranks and Defense Department civilians, those thoughts quickly dissipated in the packed Pentagon auditorium. The two were applauded when they walked in, when they walked out, and numerous times in between. “It’s an honor to be here with you,” Novick said. “We have a treat today,” Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said in introducing Burns and Novick, whose work has won rave reviews but has been criticized by some for supposedly implying a “moral equivalence” between war protesters and those who fought in it.
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick discuss their film at a PBS event earlier in 2017.
Shanahan focused on those who served, and continue to serve through the example of shared sacrifice they set for future generations. “Ken, Lynn, thank you for telling the story that, as [Defense Secretary Jim Mattis] told the Association of the U.S. Army last week: ‘The Vietnam veterans raised today’s generation of military leaders. In that way, their protection of our country extends beyond their own years in uniform to the present day,’ ” he said. “Those veterans deserve to know their sacrifices are not taken for granted,” Shanahan said. “Ken, Lynn, we at the Department of Defense are grateful to you for this opportunity.”
Marines marching in Danang. March 15, 1965.
The co-directors stressed that the series is an effort at storytelling meant to avoid taking sides in the greater interest of opening up an overdue national conversation on the war and its aftermath in the U.S. and in Vietnam. However, Burns said there was one indisputable takeaway. “We’ve learned one lesson from the war, which is we’re never going to blame the warriors again, and that’s a really good lesson,” he said to sustained applause.
Vincent Okamoto in “The Vietnam War” documentary.[/cengter]
Vincent Okamoto, an Army veteran who was the most highly decorated Japanese-American to survive the Vietnam War, said it better in one of the excerpts shown at the Pentagon: “You know what — the real heroes are the men that died, 19- and 20-year-old high school dropouts. They didn’t have the escape routes that the wealthy and the privileged had, and that was unfair,” he said. “And so they looked upon military service as like the weather. You have to go in and you do it. But to see those kids who had the least to gain — there wasn’t anything to look forward to, they weren’t going to be rewarded for their service,” Okamoto said. “And yet, their infinite patience, their loyalty to each other, their courage under fire was just phenomenal,” he said. “And you would ask yourself, ‘How does America produce young men like this?'”
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