War and remembrance

In this exclusive interview, news anchor Tom Brokaw and Pearl Harbor star Ben Affleck agree it's been their privilege to pay tribute to the memories and contributions of the Greatest Generation.

First they were glorified by NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw. Now they'll be immortalized onscreen by actor Ben Affleck. For those who came of age during World War II, these younger men -- Brokaw is 61, Affleck is 28 -- have joined the faces of that era.

Ever since Brokaw dubbed them "The Greatest Generation" in his 1998 book of the same name, Americans in their 70s and older have stopped him everywhere he goes to share memories. On television and in print, he has been what he calls "their doorman," providing an opening into their lives for the rest of America. His third book in the series, "An Album of Memories: Personal Histories From the Greatest Generation", is out this month.

Meanwhile, the $135 million epic "Pearl Harbor" hits theaters this week, starring Affleck as a daring pilot. Interest in World War II hasn't been this high since the war, and the movie is sure to intensify the fascination of younger generations. Dec. 7 will mark the 60th anniversary of the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor.

We asked Brokaw and Affleck, who had never met before, to sit down with USA WEEKEND Magazine and talk about the war and its impact on America. The two met on the legendary USS Intrepid, now docked as a museum on the Hudson River in New York City. More than 200 Intrepid crewmen died in the war, half when the ship was hit by kamikaze suicide attacks. For their two hours together, both the TV anchor and the actor had a sense that the ship was a sacred place. Edited excerpts:

Brokaw: Before this project, did you think about the war much?

Affleck: Not really. It was a distant, abstract time seen in black-and-white pictures. I knew my grandfathers had fought, but neither talked about it much.

Brokaw: Doing research about Pearl Harbor, what surprised you?

Affleck: I was interested in the degree to which people didn't want to get involved in World War II [before the attack]: the isolationists, the America First movement. In 1939, more than 80% were against getting into the war.

Brokaw: Pearl Harbor changed that in a heartbeat.

Affleck: Exactly. Until then, there was a belief we could be by ourselves in North America, that we didn't have to have anything to do with anyone else. Pearl Harbor showed that the United States, for better or worse, is permanently linked to the rest of the world.

EVERYONE'S WAR

Affleck: I was surprised by how much more regionalized the country was during World War II. There wasn't this global village we have now. To be a Kentuckian [for instance] was very different from being from somewhere else. My grandfather left law school and went into the Marines, and he learned a lot. He told me, "I had misconceptions about people." The armed forces were a couple of steps ahead of the rest of the country in bringing people together.

Brokaw: You know, there were no college deferments in World War II. Everybody went. No one could escape it. And if they weren't in uniform, they were involved at home in factories producing armaments. That was a huge difference between Vietnam and World War II. During Vietnam, a lot of America was able to turn its back on the war.

EARLIEST MEMORIES

Brokaw: I was born in 1940, and we lived on an Army base in northern South Dakota, in a crackerbox house. So my first memories are of everything being khaki, with everyone going to war and coming home from war. It was an ammunition depot, so they were exploding armaments. And we had a stockade of Italian prisoners of war at the edge of town. I remember them vividly.

Affleck: I'm told I watched Nixon resign on television [in 1974, at age 2], but I don't remember it. I was aware of Vietnam. My generation grew up knowing that was the cultural thing that shaped people's mistrust of government and led them to question authority.

HEROES AND ANTI-HEROES

Affleck: Doing research, I watched old war movies and newsreel footage and listened to old speeches and radio shows, and it was interesting how earnest and direct it all was. There wasn't this kind of sullen irony James Dean and Marlon Brando later introduced. That hipster cool was largely absent.

Brokaw: There weren't anti-heroes then. We wanted heroes who were larger than life in literature, on film, on the battlefield.

Affleck: Honestly, if [Franklin D.] Roosevelt were here today, he'd be the polio president. Then he'd be the "Is his wife a lesbian?" president. There'd be every tawdry scandal. He had affairs, and that's who he'd be. We've reduced our leaders because we've focused on the sordid. Look at any great man in history. They all had flaws. The only man who might have passed the scrutiny we put our leaders through is Hitler. He didn't drink; he didn't cheat. He's the only one whose clean living could pass this bizarre puritanical double standard.

Brokaw: We pronounce leaders guilty as soon as they step into the arena.

GREAT, BUT NOT PERFECT

Affleck: Yes, I think the World War II generation was the greatest. They had to answer enormous challenges: the Depression, the war, rebuilding the economic infrastructure of the country. My generation will never know what we're capable of until we're tested.

Brokaw: It wasn't a perfect generation. It took them too long to recognize the place of women, and certainly, it was a painful time for people of color. But at a very early age they were given enormous responsibilities. That's a huge difference between that generation and yours. Your generation has more time to evolve in the way that it wants to.

PATRIOTISM TODAY

Affleck: People my age are enormously proud of this country and proud to be Americans. But one thing we do that the World War II generation did not [do as well]: We see the gray areas.

Brokaw: My strong feeling about patriotism is that you love your country for what it is and because you want it to get better. It's not just blind loyalty. Your generation has that kind of patriotism. It's just not the flag-waving patriotism we associate with World War II.

Affleck: Not everyone proved themselves brave and heroic. But many, many did. For people my age, that's scary and fascinating, because you're not sure how you'd respond. We look at the greatest generation, and then the enormous work that the baby boomers did. What have we done? Nothing yet.

Brokaw: But people I talk to from the greatest generation have enormous faith in your generation. They know how much better educated and more sophisticated their grandchildren are. If the country was under attack, there's no doubt in my mind your generation would respond in the same fashion.

MOVIES AS HISTORY LESSONS

Brokaw: Saving Private Ryan was a wake-up call to your generation and to baby boomers. That opening sequence was the most vivid portrayal of combat ever seen on the screen. Steven Spielberg says he used to believe the best stories came out of the human imagination, but after Schindler's List and Private Ryan he now believes the best stories come out of real human experiences. Look at the stories in my books: You can't improve on them when it comes to drama, poignancy, heroism, human frailty and all those elements that make up great art.

Affleck: I wish people, particularly my generation, didn't get so much of their sense of history and politics from pop culture. It's not the most accurate way to learn. But since so many people do go to movies for history, the onus is on us [in the film industry] to get it right. Seeing how much Private Ryan meant to people reinforced our determination to make sure we were accurate. We had veterans and [Pearl Harbor] survivors talking to us [on the set]. I don't care if the movie is a commercial bomb -- no pun intended. I just hope these veterans feel we've done their story justice. That's the audience my heart hangs on.

THE WAR'S SHADOW IN 2001

Brokaw: John Keegan, the British historian, wrote that World War II was the largest single event in the history of mankind. It was fought on six of the seven continents and all the seas. Fifty million died. It was an event of such magnitude that it took us 50 years to come to grips with it, to get perspective on it. When people came back from the war, they were desperate to put it behind them and didn't want to talk. Now they're in the mortality zone. They're looking back and saying, "Whatever else I did in my life, I did that. I had a part in something that was larger than our ability to understand it."

Affleck: It raised my consciousness of the sacrifices people made. There was no sense of entitlement. People didn't say, "Me first." They just all came together, volunteering in droves.

Brokaw: Baby boomers are saying, "How do I measure up? What did I do in my life?" We live in a time now where someone goes on a four-day white-water rafting trip, gets a little wet and says, "God, I really went through something!" They're looking back to World War II and hearing their parents' stories of being separated from loved ones, being shot at, and they know their parents did something that counted.

THE MILITARY TODAY

Affleck: We shot on six or seven military installations, and I found that morale was great and we have a phenomenal military, overpowering. People in the military are the most impressive people I've ever met in my life.

Brokaw: It's a volunteer army. These are people who want to be there. They take great pride in what they're doing. I've been in F-15s and F-16s, and in Kosovo and the Persian Gulf, and it's breathtaking how skilled and passionate these people are. In terms of preparedness, the biggest problem we have isn't from the Russian army; it's from some demented soul coming through JFK Airport with a nuclear device in a suitcase.

Affleck: World War II was the just war, the good war. There's been no other good war. Now, every time we want to demonize a foreign leader, we say he's another Adolf Hitler.

IS AMERICA BETTER TODAY?

Brokaw: Sure it is. We've expanded rights. There's a social safety net, a greater level of prosperity. People might say we're not better off now because we've kind of lost our way, but there was a lot of pain in those years in families that did stay together. There was a lot of abuse that didn't get treated. We can't look at the past through a rose-colored rear-view mirror.

Affleck: When the war started, they told 14- and 15-year-olds they'd soon have to pick up guns and save the world. They had to get these kids ready. It wasn't healthy for the kids, but desperate times make for desperate measures. We now glamorize that time, but there's a danger in that.

Brokaw: The expression I hear most often from World War II vets is: "It was a million-dollar experience, and I wouldn't give you a plug nickel to go through it again."

A GENERATION REACHING OUT

Brokaw: After World War II, people read newspapers more than any generation before, because they'd paid a terrible price for their ignorance of the world. Now, you find them at the end of their lives, retired from their careers, and they're out teaching in schools and mentoring kids. They feel an obligation to be in constant maintenance of this world they helped create. I never look at anyone of a certain age without thinking, "I wonder where they were [on Dec. 7, 1941]."

This conversation was moderated by the magazine's Jeffrey Zaslow.
Photos by DEBORAH FEINGOLD for USA WEEKEND