By Brendan Barnes, Staff Writer

With pressure of ‘Band of Brothers'(2001) critical and popular success looming over its Sunday premiere, HBO’s new ten-part miniseries, ‘The Pacific’, stood its ground under fire.

Despite the anticipation building up over the past week, the premiere episode began quietly enough. Rather than exploding into gunfire, as many doubtless expected, executive producer Tom Hanks narrated a short introduction detailing factors and events culminating in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. Such an introduction might seem a bit contrived and formulaic but, for an area in history that many American’s still—and not even back then either—do not know anything about. Americans knew about Paris and Berlin; but how many Americans, today or then, could say they knew what or where Guadalcanal is?

After the introduction, the episode begins with John Leckie James Badge Dale) leaving church after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and then quietly revealing to a friend that he has enlisted in the United States Marines. The focus then shifts to John Basilone (John Seda), a sergeant in the Marine Corps, as he is briefed by a superior on the battle the Marines face in taking back the Pacific from the Japanese.

When we return back to Leckie, he is being dropped off by his father at the train station. Even as he is about to depart, Leckie’s father is cool towards him—perhaps distressed about his son going into unknown territory—commenting only on his car troubles. Basilone has a much warmer send-off celebrating Christmas with his family, who expects victory within a year. His father, too, says nothing of the impending deployment, but silently communicates his compassion for his son.

It is over halfway through the episode when we finally see the Leckie and the other Marines landing at Guadalcanal. The suspense builds from the moment the Marines have their final meal on the transport ships, with some Marines comparing their meal to those of criminals heading to the electric chair. As the landing craft head toward the beach, the tension climbs upwards as Leckie waits for the first bullet to whiz by. Yet once they land on the beach, the only enemy waiting for them is sand in their boots.

Again the suspense mounts, as every crack of a branch and breath of wind appears to be a Japanese soldier. Not surprisingly, the first attack the Marine’s face is a night ambush that the Marines successfully, but not easily, repel. The highlight of the episode follows the morning after as Leckie and other Marine’s search through the dead soldiers’ belongings. Looking through the backpack of a slain Japanese soldier, he finds a photograph presumably of the man’s wife. Only then does Leckie realize the Japanese aren’t the caricatured, mindless barbarians that propaganda has made them out to be. He burns the photo, but still feels the burden of knowing winning in the Pacific will be far from easy.

Compared to ‘Band of Brothers’, ‘The Pacific’ is more scattered, but no less focused.
 It is fitting, too, because while soldiers in Europe knew exactly where they were going, Leckie and his fellow Marines had no idea their destination even existed. What makes the characters of ‘The Pacific’ so endearing is not that they brave unknown territories and terrain, but that they overcome an omnipresent enemy: if they aren’t fending Japanese attacks, they are battling the jungle, the heat, diseases, and even themselves.