Still no excuse for Burns' omission of Hispanics

There is a story that has been in my family for more than 60 years.

It's V-J Day, 1945, the end of World War II in the Pacific, and my grandparents are working with my father and his four brothers in the fields of Central California. My great-aunt happens to be driving by and spots them. Ecstatic over the news, she pulls over, gets out of the car, and rushes into the fields to tell my grandfather.

"Roman," she exclaims, "what are you doing? Don't you know? The war is over."

The old man from Mexico, the story goes, calmly and expressionlessly bows his head and continues working.

"Yes," he says. "But for us, the war never ends."

Six decades later, I bet that's how a lot of Hispanics feel as they watch "The War" -- Ken Burns' 14½-hour documentary on World War II, airing this week on PBS. Burns is known for his deft touch in chronicling the African-American experience in films about jazz, baseball and the Civil War. But when it comes to Hispanics, he's got a tin ear. And so, despite the fact that as many as 500,000 Hispanics served in World War II, the filmmaker somehow missed those stories. Besides African-Americans, his imagination extended to Jewish-Americans, Italian-Americans and Japanese-Americans. But, it went blank when it hit the tortilla curtain.

When Hispanic groups howled in protest, they were ignored. It wasn't until someone raised the possibility of boycotting the film's corporate sponsors that phone calls started getting returned and meetings were called.

In the end, Burns agreed to add just 28 minutes of new interviews and photographs, and to tell the stories of two Hispanic veterans and one Native American.

Gee thanks, Ken. But don't strain yourself.

Enraged that PBS is proceeding with "The War," those same Hispanic organizations that have been fighting this battle for the better part of a year are demanding that Hispanics and their sympathizers boycott the film.

The activists are right to be upset over this embarrassing oversight and the condescending way in which Burns and PBS responded when someone called them on it. But they're wrong to suggest a boycott of a film that -- incomplete or not -- deals with an important subject that Americans should know more about.

I'm no fan of boycotts. And, I'm really opposed to boycotting documentaries or anything that feeds the brain and nourishes the soul.

Not that PBS and Burns don't deserve the criticism they've received. They do. The only thing more lame than leaving out Hispanics were the excuses they came up with for how it happened. First, Burns said that he had concentrated on four U.S. cities and suggested that maybe there weren't Hispanics in any of them; that might have been believable if one of the cities wasn't Sacramento, Calif., which has a large Hispanic population. Next, Burns claimed that Hispanics hadn't approached him with their stories; but that doesn't explain why he didn't go out and collect those stories himself, the way he did with other groups that he was sure not to leave out.

Watching the first few installments of "The War," it was interesting to see older Americans of all colors -- nearly all colors -- recall what it was like living through the rise of Hitler or the attack on Pearl Harbor and describe those events as life-changing.

No doubt. But there was another group of people who also lived through those times, and their lives changed too. Back then, they deserved more respect than they got. And, as we have learned from the Burns flap, that is still true today.

© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group