The Making of HBO Miniseries “The Pacific”

The Pacific is a TV offering produced by HBO, which launched on March 14th, 2010 in the United States.

This TV series was designed to tie in with the 2001 series ‘Band of Brothers’ and centers around the US Marine Corps and their involvement in the Pacific Theater of Operations while in the Pacific War. Band of Brothers followed the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the European area. The Pacific shows you the experiences of three different marines (Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge, and John Basilone) they were all in the 1st Marine Division but in different regiments.

The Pacific was the idea of Bruce C. McKenna (co-exec producer), and he is one of the primary writers from Band of Brothers. The role of project consultant on the Pacific was taken on by Hugh Ambrose (whose father is Stephen Ambrose – author of Band of Brothers).

Within the series, you see many of the 1st Marine Division in battle throughout the Pacific, including Cape Gloucester, Okinawa, Guadalcanal, Peleliu and the Battle of Iwo Jima. The series gets a lot of its ideas from memoirs of Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie – two United States Marines that were there during these times.

Eugene’s memoirs are taken from ‘With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa’ and Roberts are taken from ‘Helmet for My Pillow’. The series also draws inspiration from ‘Sledge’s China Marine and Red Blood, Black Sand’ a memoir of a United States Marine who fought on Iwo Jima, Chuck Tatum.

In this video, you can see how they filmed it!