Norm Hatch featured on National Public Radio (NPR), ABC News

UPDATE: Norm also appeared as the “Person of the Week” on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer.

During Word War II, Norman Hatch was a combat cameraman who witnessed — and filmed — some of the most bitter fighting in the Pacific theater. His efforts ended with, of all things, an Academy Award — for footage so brutal that it took special permission from President Franklin Roosevelt to allow his short documentary to be shown as a newsreel.

A new 10-part miniseries on HBO called The Pacific has revived interest in the United States’ island-by-island campaign against the Japanese in the 1940s. Six decades after those battles, Hatch, sitting in the basement den of his Alexandria, Va., home — filled with film canisters and movie posters — still remembers it clearly. His story on NPR can be read here.