RSS Feed MenuHow many, one wonders, are following the 10-part dramatization of the Pacific war against Japan, whose 9th episode airs Sunday at 9 p.m.? In its review of the Stephen Spielberg/Tom Hanks co-production, Britain’s Spectator magazine opines that men and women see the movie differently.
To women, it’s the same battle scenes in every episode, with indistinguishable men in olive drab clothing, shooting at night and is both impersonal and boring. On the other hand, while men view it on edge, and think but for the grace of circumstances it could be them out there.
There is some validity in both views.
What is puzzling to some is why Tom Hanks, who starred in Saving Private Ryan and was co-producer of the series Band of Brothers (the truest depiction of WWII ever made), seems to think the war against Japan was about “racism” – as he seems to think the present war in Afghanistan is about.
In different interviews, Hanks has called the Pacific a war of “terror and racism.” He adds: “Back in World War II we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar . . . to what’s going on today.”
Tom Hanks has got it wrong. Heck, he wasn’t born until 11 years after WWII and has no memory of it. It wasn’t because the Japanese were “different” that our side sought to “annihilate” them, but because they wouldn’t surrender and fought to the death.
And they attacked us first, remember.
Recalling popular slurs against an enemy in war isn’t necessarily racism. In WWI and II, Germans were variously called Jerry, Fritz, Krauts, Square Heads, but no soldier who ever fought them didn’t respect them as soldiers.
In the Korean war, our soldiers called the enemy “Gooks,” but respected their courage and discipline, and never underestimated their resolve.
It could be argued more than any other factor, the Pacific war changed America’s generalized view that the Japanese might be inferior - good imitators and copiers of American toys and technology, but intellectually and culturally inferior.
The Marines who fought through the Pacific, island by island, quickly learned respect for Japanese soldiers – whose zeal they probably didn’t understand, but also didn’t belittle. In Singapore and the Burma campaign, the British learned the folly of under-estimating the Japanese.
At war’s end, General Douglas MacArthur, was imposed as America’s emperor on a defeated Japan. He probably understood the Japanese mentality better than anyone, and contributed immensely to the peaceful reconstruction of Japan as a nation friendly to, and in harmony with, Western methods and values.
Tom Hanks and others err by assuming slang descriptions of an enemy reflect prejudices and racism. Overt racism is seen more in deeds than in words – or should be.
The Pacific series, isn’t as effective as Band of Brothers, but then it depicts a different, more difficult war against a fanatic enemy that preferred death to surrender.
At Tarawa, 12,000 attacking Marines suffered 3,000 casualties, and of 4,500 Japanese defenders, only 17 survived. At Iwo Jima some 6,800 Americans were killed, as were 20,000 of 21,000 Japanese defenders. At Peleliu the U.S. lost 10,000 while only 300 of 12,000 Japanese defenders survived; At Okinawa, 40,000 Americans were killed, 60,000 wounded. Of 115,000 Japanese defenders, only 7,500 survived.
These statistics alone give an idea of what sort of a war the Pacific was.
buddyglass // May 7, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Hanks is way off when he characterizes the entire Pacific war as being motivated by racism, but he’s still got a nugget of a point. Look at allied propaganda of the day, and specifically the way it portrays the Japanese vs. how it portrays Germans. The Japanese physical features are exagerrated, and they’re portrayed as simultaneously comical, stupid, and barbaric.
Think we would have dropped the bomb on Berlin or Hamburg? Maybe, but I’m not convinced.
TerryF98 // May 7, 2010 at 3:18 pm
As I tell my wife when she gets wrapped up in the latest drama.
“Its only a program” Chill.
sinz54 // May 7, 2010 at 4:29 pm
buddyglass: Think we would have dropped the bomb on Berlin or Hamburg?
Absolutely.
Unlike Japan, Germany had a serious program to develop its own atomic bomb, headed by Werner Heisenberg (yes, THAT Heisenberg). Had the war dragged on into 1946 or 1947, it might have turned into a regional nuclear war.
Dropping the bomb on Hamburg would not only have eliminated Nazi Germany as a threat, along with their nuclear program; but it would also have been a big light shining in the faces of the Russians to back off and stay in Eastern Europe. That way, all of Germany would have remained in the hands of the Brits and Americans. No Berlin Wall, no Soviet invasion to worry about.
Getting back to the original point: Of course there was anti-Japanese prejudice among the American people. But the Japanese hadn’t exactly endeared themselves to anyone by their actions. The Bataan Death March, even more than Pearl Harbor, enraged Americans who wanted to make Japan pay. The Japanese acted that way because they were among the biggest racists of all–fanatically anti-Caucasian and anti-Semitic (something I don’t think Tom Hanks mentioned). The Japanese considered the Chinese and Koreans as scum, just like the Germans considered the Slavs.
These history lessons have been flushed down the memory hole by liberals like Hanks who don’t want to discuss anyone else’s flaws and evils but our own. It’s too bad that nasty Holocaust of the Jews is just staring them in the face. Otherwise, they could make us feel guilty over Dresden too. But those gas chambers? It’s real hard to feel sympathy for the type of people who could build and operate those things.
I’m tremendously proud of what we did in World War II. We bred docile Japanese and docile Germans–we gave those nations extreme makeovers and they have been peaceful for over 60 years. Given their past track record, that’s quite an achievement.
sinz54 // May 7, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Damn, I hate the fact that there is no preview mode!
buddyglass // May 7, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Well, we’re both speculating, so who’s to say. I think there would have been some serious resistance to dropping the bomb on Germany at the same point in time when we bombed Japan.
Yes, the Japanese were crazily racist. So? We weren’t talking about Japanese racism. It’s hard to avoid the fact that the “average American” viewed the Japanese and Germans differently during the war, motivated primarily by issues of race and religion.
JeninCT // May 7, 2010 at 10:55 pm
I think the problem with Hanks is that he’s viewing history through a politically correct lens, and not through the eyes of a soldier of that era. If he were, he’d never call it a racist war. It wasn’t. It was a war about defending freedom from tyranny. Of course our American soldiers viewed the Japs as culturally different. They couldn’t understand concepts such as the Kamikaze pilots. They didn’t want to die, they wanted to get back home to their country and their families.
aDude // May 7, 2010 at 11:55 pm
It is difficult for most people to take a life. To aim a weapon at another human being at close range and squeeze the trigger to end that life is not something that civilized people can do lightly. Therefore, the soldier has to be trained to think of the person on the other side as different and preferably evil.
The world of 1942-1945 was different than the world of today. It was easier to demonize the Japanese soldier based on race because they looked different and fought differently than the typical American soldier (no surprise that the 442nd Infantry Regiment served in Europe). A look at US propaganda posters from the era would make you cringe.
Those posters are interesting because they would typically show Hitler as the representitive of the Germans, but the anti-Japanese posters showed not Tojo or Hirohito, but just a Japanese soldier. That’s the way we rallied the troops and the population back then. As a society we were more racist than we are today. Abstract ideas about imperialism and totalitarianism aren’t as easy to grasp as simply saying the other guy is of an evil race.
But that was then. Having seen the first eight episodes of the Pacific I don’t see much in the way of the propaganda that was going around at the time. Even the dialog is much more mild towards the Japanese than the movies produced in the 1940’s.
I think there has been too much made about Hank’s comments about World War II. I am surprised there isn’t more made about his inference that what we are doing today is aimed at people who are different, lumping all Muslims in the terrorist bucket. I think that was where he was really aiming.
Ultraworld // May 8, 2010 at 2:01 am
I have watched some of the Pacific series. It’s not nearly as well done as Band of Brothers. The Pacific jumps all around chronologically. I have a great uncle who fought in the Pacific campaign. Till the day he died, he wouldn’t ride in an elevator with a Jap. He said he could smell one. He drove a Volkswagen though. The was was all racial. The German’s hated the Jews. We hated the Japs. Propaganda films portrayed Japs as little yellow ppl with thick glasses and bucked teeth that would slit your throat while you slept (in some cases this was true).The war in the Pacific was racial. This is just not a very well good series.
daveklingler // May 8, 2010 at 2:27 am
sinz54:
– Had the war dragged on to 1946 or 1947, Heisenberg, Hahn, Weizsacker and von Laue would in all probability have discovered that their heavy water reactors and sheets of aluminum were not capable of being weaponized, but they were not only years behind, Germany did not have the resources or industrial capacity to do what the United States did (and was not close to acquiring it). “Had the war dragged on…” arguments are always impressive until you look at the facts.
– Historically the Japanese looked down upon everyone in Asia as varying levels of scum, and other foreigners somewhere below that. But for one thing, Hanks is portraying Americans in the Pacific and Japanese from a 1940’s American point of view, not Japanese in the Pacific. For another thing, it’s one thing for an American to portray Americans as racist, but it’s another thing entirely for an American to portray the Japanese as they really were; let the Japanese portray themselves as racists for the Japanese audience, if they want to. The portrayal of Americans in “The Pacific” is pretty accurate, in my estimation.
– I grew up with a model of the German soldier as an inhumanly vicious racist and the Japanese soldier as an incomprehensibly inhuman and vicious (and crazy) little yellow guy. My respect for the inscrutable and inhuman mystery of the Japanese soldier when I was little grew into a fascination with Japan and Japanese culture later in life, but there is no doubt in my mind that my viewpoint on Japanese people did not differ measurably from the mainstream viewpoint of average American boys in the Pacific. The average American boy didn’t know any Japanese people before he went to war and he hadn’t met any Japanese people by the time he left, other than the ones who were shooting at him. Of course he was racist, and why should anybody judge kids in the 1940s for having racist attitudes against the foreigners they were fighting? I don’t think they do.
– That Americans of those years might have parallels with American of today is a point that bears some thought. Your statement, “We bred docile Japanese and docile Germans…” reflects an outlook that is no different from the outlook of many American boys portrayed in “The Pacific”, and there are many Americans today who think we are breeding docile Iraqis.
ottovbvs // May 8, 2010 at 9:17 am
…….I haven’t watched The Pacific (although I agree that BoB was excellent) so I’m not sure whether Hanks actually claims the pacific war was “about racism.”……..probably not since people like Worthington seem to spend their time trawling for controversy and he thinks this is one …….what he probably did do was highlight the elements of racism in the attitudes to the Japanese that were very prevalent at the time……anyone who doubts it only has to take a quick look at how the Japanese were characterised in movies, comic books, posters and all the other paraphenalia of popular culture…….obviously this was exacerbated by both the initial surprise attack and subsequent reports of Japanese atrocities……so was racism present in US attitudes?……sure…….but was the the war all about racism?……not really
ottovbvs // May 8, 2010 at 9:23 am
‘– That Americans of those years might have parallels with American of today is a point that bears some thought. Your statement, “We bred docile Japanese and docile Germans…”
……..this alas reflects all too clearly Sinz’s thought patterns …….on another thread he’s blaming the narrowness of the conservative victory in Britain on Asian immigrants…….very weird
sinz54 // May 8, 2010 at 10:42 am
dave klingler: That Americans of those years might have parallels with American of today is a point that bears some thought. Your statement, “We bred docile Japanese and docile Germans…”
It’s an accurate statement.
Truman gave explicit orders to “de-Nazify” Germany and to “de-Shintoize” Japan. The U.S. military wrote the so-called “Shinto Directive,” which abolished Shintoism as the official state religion of Japan, so that it could no longer be used as a cover for racism and imperialism and militarism.
MacArthur wrote a draft copy of the new Japanese constitution, which transferred sovereignty away from the Emperor to the people, and basically handed it to a new puppet Japanese Diet, which made some minor changes and then ratified it. In this new Constitution, there was no longer any official state religion.
Those reforms “took,” the people accepted them peacefully–and we withdrew our troops.
Over in Germany, it was commonly understood that the purpose of NATO was to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” Denazification included eliminating all works of art that were claimed to glorify Nazism. Some of these were harmless. We wiped out a German culture that we considered evil. Allied propaganda broadcasts did not end with the German surrender. For years afterward, we continued to rub the Nazi atrocities in the Germans’ faces, making them feel guilty.
We stayed there for decades, so that the West Germans could not use the Soviet threat as an excuse for massive rearmament. By the time Germany was reunified, the vast majority of Germans were too young to remember Hitler. All they had known throughout their lives was democracy and American benificence. That’s quite a change from their grandparents.
Can you imagine the outcry if Bush had signed a directive “de-Islamicizing” occupied Iraq? Instead, we allowed the Iraqis to write a constitution that still leaves an honored place for the Islamic law of Sharia. Bush was being politically correct and stupid.
And I still wish FrumForum had a “preview” mode for these posts!
jakester // May 8, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I think this is more of a case of anti-anti-racism then any real validity. Face it, there was more than just an element of racism in that war, with the Germans & Japanese being the main culprits. While the US soldiers respected the bravery & tenaciousness of the Japanese soldiers, they also despised them on a personal level based on the barbarity that was inculcated into the Japanese like bayoneting POWs or the brutalities visited on civilians that would make the Nazis wince like the Rape of Nanking. Of course the war was not all about Yankee racism to the Japanese or the reverse, but that element of racism made it easier to abandon say high explosives precision aerial bombing of solid targets like we did over Germany to mass incendiary British style firebombing over Japan like the Tokyo firestorm that roasted almost 100K civilians.
jakester // May 8, 2010 at 2:20 pm
sinz54,
good point about the Shariah Constitutions in both our “model” countries. that makes me say it isn’t worth it when for the sake of political expediency, not correctness, we abandon our universal human rights standards in favor of Islamic chauvinism.
daveklingler // May 8, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Sinz, if “de-Shintoizing” Japan meant giving the Japanese people freedom of religion, what would you have had Bush do to “de-Islamicize” Iraq? I’ll grant that I wished many times that the Bush administration had had the competence to actively lead Iraq to a better country, rather than the slipshod, haphazard, no-one’s-in-charge-here anti-plan they adopted, but I’m not sure one could ever “de-Christianize” the U.S., for instance, and religious practice in the U.S. is a lot lower key than it is in Iraq. It doesn’t exactly fit our “freedom of religion” mantra, and I don’t think when you come right down to it that the practice of Islam as a whole has anything to do with any problems we might be facing in the Mid-East. Angry people are angry people no matter what they practice. Maybe you mean “de-Shiafy” or “de-Sunnify”?
jakester // May 8, 2010 at 4:55 pm
daveklingler
Over half the Christians in Iraq have left since we invaded. For a supposedly Christian Bush admin, they don’t seem to care too much about Xtians outside the USA>
daveklingler // May 8, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Sinz, I’m having trouble reconciling your comments against the religious persecution of the Jews with your call for “de-Islamicizing” Iraq. I guess the only reasonable conclusion is that you’re not against religious persecution; you’re just against religious persecution using gas chambers. Or are you just a troll?
easton // May 8, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I have watched every episode of the series, and while I don’t rate its quality as high as BoB the best episodes are still incredibly moving and powerful, and its depictions of the battle in Peleliu are riveting and powerful. I also am extremely grateful that the memory of John Basilone, one of the greatest American soldiers of all time, was revived and told well. There is not a single poster here who is half the man he was, myself definitely included. He was home, an acclaimed war hero with the option to leave the service and live a life of honor and glory, yet he re-enlisted to die a heroic death on Iwo Jima. This is what the series is about. As to whatever Hanks says outside of it, to me is irrelevant since I detect none of this within the show itself. I think this series is important and should be judged on its own merits.
jakester // May 8, 2010 at 6:53 pm
The US soldier could very easily identify with the average German soldier since they had very similar racial and cultural backgrounds. Many Americans came from a Germany, even before we were a country and/or could speak German and many Germans knew English and had contact or relatives in the US. Not so with the Japanese. The racial and cultural gap was far larger and face it, it is much easier to hate people who look, talk and act radically different than you, especially when they behead your fellow soldiers.
Johnnnymac66 // May 9, 2010 at 4:57 am
It’s always easy to criticize & nitpick from the sidelines.
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg knew they were walking a tightrope with this project. On the one hand, they had to capture the horror of close in combat where tens of thousands of men were shredded in a global war machine. On the other hand, they try to capture the human interest stories of a few of the combat survivors who kick off each episode.
The belief here is that “The Pacific” should be seen as a history book along with “Band of Brothers”, “Saving Private Ryan”, and perhaps even Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima movies.
These films make the propaganda films of John Wayne & Henry Fonda look like jingoistic garbage. And “Band of Brothers” makes George C. Scott’s “Patton” an unwatchable cartoon.
I think history will call “The Pacific” a masterpiece of film making.
sinz54 // May 9, 2010 at 11:37 am
daveklinger: I guess the only reasonable conclusion is that you’re not against religious persecution; you’re just against religious persecution using gas chambers.
The “de-Shintoization” of Japan didn’t involve religious persecution. It involved removing Shintoism from its former place as the official state religion of Japan.
Had Iraq formally surrendered to U.S. forces, we could have written the Iraqis a new constitution which marginalized the Islamic law of Sharia in the same manner. The people of Iraq would still be free to practice Sunni Islam, Shia Islam, Christianity, or no religion. But none of those religions would be allowed to control government policy ever again. Disputes would be handled by civilian courts, not Islamic courts.
I’m not in favor of religious persecution. Quite the contrary. The example the United States has set is that religion can flourish under a secular government.
Shintoism still exists in Japan. But it can no longer threaten the civilized world with militarism. We de-fanged it.
jakester // May 9, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Sinz
Right on! Leaving Islam as the official and dominate faith in Iraq and Afghanistan is a blow against freedom and human rights. One could still have a secular state that will be “Islam” simply because of the voter demographics, but letting contemptible Sharia’h law dictate any constitution is a blow against human rights, especially for Jews and women. It was done simply for the sake of political expediency and to mollify our “freedom loving” Islamic allies like the Sauds and Egyptians
advocatusdiaboli // May 10, 2010 at 6:02 pm
People objectify their enemies so as to make the barbarism of war more palatable. This is news? It’s not racism–we do that to all our adversaries and they to us. we even demeaned the French for not supporting us in Iraq–and we weren’t even at war with them. The real reason we didn’t use nuclear weapons had to do more with the proximity of allied nations which would experience casualties from fallout and radiation. We had no such fear with Japan so it made a good test case.
advocatusdiaboli // May 10, 2010 at 6:09 pm
“Right on! Leaving Islam as the official and dominate faith in Iraq and Afghanistan is a blow against freedom and human rights.”
A nation decides it’s religion–trying to accomplish that mission in Afghanistan or any Islamic country is as likely as abolishing Christianity in the US. I am no fan of religion being used to justify violence and all of them are being used by some group to do just that, but people believe in the religion of their birth and, while they might switch denominations or sects, very few make the huge cultural change between major religions. An invader certainly isn’t going to change a nation’s religion in this modern age very easily.