Up until last week's appearance by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' at the National Press Club, we had every intention of viewing the man's "The War" on PBS.We chose not to see it because we knew, from Ken Burns' own review of the production, that story was lacking to a displeasure that won't go away. We think PBS and Burns could have done better if they really wanted to.

We suspect not too many cable viewers caught the National Press Club presentation in the middle of the week. We really didn't learn anything new from Burns and his co-producer Lynn Novick when they talked about the making of "The War" for PBS. U.S. audiences, nevertheless, should find the 14-hour series entertaining.

ADMITTEDLY, WE WERE

not too happy with Burns' own review of the film in USA Weekend, a Sunday insert carried by this newspaper. We said so in a July 16 Monday Wash. In that USA Weekend review of months ago, Burns claimed he had interviewed more than 500 people.

The initial film narratives for the PBS movie, however, did not include a single Hispanic. That was before the World War II Oral History Project lady, Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, raised her hand and complained.

As a result of protests by Rivas-Rodriguez, which led to suggestions for congressional hearings and boycotts of corporate sponsors, PBS and Burns agreed to a token change in the production. A San Antonio moviemaker was hired to include narratives by two Latinos at the end of the first installment.

WE COULDN'T HELP

but dig out of the box a copy of this newspaper's 24-page special section (Our Heroes, A Salute to WWII Veterans).

We read the names of Laredo's World War II dead printed in a Veterans of Foreign Wars poster. These are names engraved on the memorial at Jarvis Plaza. We had earlier sent a copy of Our Heroes to USA Weekend and PBS. Today, Our Heroes is a local collector's item.

We found disturbing something that Ken Burns said last week in response to a question at the National Press Club. He was asked about the controversy over the absence of Latino participants in the film. His reply was the project had solicited story contributions and that they got no response from Latinos.

Michael McCall, a writer in Nashville, Tenn., wrote for the cover story of American Profile, another weekly insert of LMT, "The new, 14-hour series looks at the entire sweep of the war, detailing battles in Europe, the Pacific and Africa. Yet it brings the global conflict home by telling the story from the focal point of four U.S. towns. By focusing on families and communities, the film examines the local repercussions of the bravery, tragedy and sacrifice that arose during a time of unprecedented, wide-ranging warfare."

MCCALL QUOTED BURNS,

"We wanted to tell the story on a more human level, from the ground up."

Burns and his crew went to Luverne, Minn., Mobile, Ala., Sacramento, Calif., and Waterbury, Conn. Can you imagine Burns not finding Hispanic World War II veterans in California?

Here's what McCall wrote about these towns: "During World War II, Waterbury's industrial niche made it a major supplies of armaments.

Mobile was selected because of the war letters of one of its citizens, Eugene Sledge, and Sacramento fit the demographic that Burns wanted to tell the story of the Japanese-American experience during the war.

But how did he pick Luverne, a farming town of 4,617 in the southwest corner of Minnesota?"

The American Profile story says Burns was trying to learn more about a former fighter pilot from Luverne and in the search ran into archives of the local newspaper, The Rock County Star Herald, and columns of an editor who wrote about the subject.

In Mobile, Ala., he found a medical doctor who joined the Marines at age 17 after Pearl Harbor.

Big deal. We had a number of young men joining the military service before they were 17. We can only assume these fellows never heard of military bases in Texas and gunnery schools in deep South Texas, or the thousands who volunteered or were drafted out of Laredo and of South Texas - the majority Mexican-Americans (Hispanic).

Surely, they never heard the stories of Fidel (Raul) Elizondo, Margarito Chapa, Homero Herrera, Daniel Salinas, Pablo Martinez, Luis Valls, Raul Ramirez, Luis Benjamin Salazar, Amadeo R. Garza, Luis V. Ramos, Homero Martinez, Manuel Tijerina Jr., Victor Jacaman, Maria Salazar, Hector Pena, Juan Valls, Eduardo Botello, Ramiro Pena, Alfonso Valls, Sócrates Pappas and many others.

Imagine a surviving brother telling Burns the story of Luis D. Guerra. In a memoriam carried by LMT, brothers and family members of Luis D. Guerra told the story of how he enlisted in the Army at the age of 17 and having been taken prisoner by the Japanese at Corregidor.

The memoriam narrative told of Luis' surviving the horrors of the 55-mile Bataan Death March and later in Osaka, Japan as a slave to work in the coal mines.

It told of having died of starvation in the death camp and that his ashes were returned "to his beloved town of Laredo and were laid to rest in the family plot."

The memoriam in this newspaper marked the 63rd anniversary of Guerra's death on Sept. 18, 1944. The memorial was from "your brothers, Refugio, Guadalupe, Carlos and Jose Guerra, and all family members."

We trust our readers will understand our outrage at the maker of "The War" and PBS. We remember the local stories. Many of these memories were triggered by circumstances surrounding the PBS documentary.

Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez said a mouthful when she observed, "We need to walk away from all of this, feeling empowered and that we stood up and said we are not going to take this anymore."

The Burns people do not want to hear it anymore. A Burns spokesperson told the AP, "We have said everything we are going to say about this issue."

Have no fear. Rivas-Rodriguez, Carlos Guerra, Hector Cantu and others shall oblige. Hector Cantu is a syndicated cartoonist and creator of Baldo with co-creator Carlos Castellanos for Universal Syndicate.

We have been following the character Benito (Bennie) Ramirez since Cantu introduced him in Baldo on Sept. 17 to focus attention on the issue.

Suzanne Gamboa's AP story reported Bennie Ramirez is "a composite of the stories of Hispanic soldiers of World War II featured in a book by University of Texas journalism professor Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez."

The Bennie Ramirez episodes in Baldo are running through Sept. 27. Imagine what Leo Garza could have done with his Nacho Guarache. Laredo has not forgotten Leo Garza of Needles fame. He was taken from this newspaper's drawing board after his work with his Needles.

Some of Leo's work found space in Stanley Green's History of the George Washington's Birthday Celebration.

And congratulations to Stan's Ph.D. historian compadre, Jerry Thompson. Jerry received the Tejano Book Prize for his new book, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas, published by Texas A&M University Press. The award was presented at the 28th State Hispanic Genealogy and History Conference in Austin, Sept. 13-16.

Jerry is on the program for the 2007-2008 A.R. Sanchez Distinguished Lecture Series. He is booked for April 9 at the Center for Fine and Performing Arts Recital Hall. His topic is Defending the Mexican Name in Texas: The Incredible Life of Juan Cortina.

(Odie Arambula is at 728-2561 or e-mail, odie@lmtonline.com)