View Full Version : Tom Hanks The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism.
The antihero
03-11-2010, 09:14
Tom Hanks solves the mistery of the Pacific War (and of all other wars that followed): it was alla about racism. I guess this is what you get when you make an ex-comedian into "America's Historian in Chief (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1969606-1,00.html)".
Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100310/ap_en_tv/us_tv_the_pacific)
HBO's `The Pacific' joins `Band of Brothers' ranks
By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer Lynn Elber, Ap Television Writer – Wed Mar 10, 12:18 pm ET
LOS ANGELES – Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg swapped other people's war stories to groundbreaking, heartbreaking effect in "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers."
The unsparing and visceral depiction of battle in their World War II collaborations is revisited by "The Pacific," a 10-part, $195 million miniseries debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on HBO. Also intact is their celebration of the American veteran.
But "The Pacific" carves its own path across a lesser-known theater of war with parallels to current conflicts. It also breaks the "Band of Brothers" mold by following its battered Marines home with a coda reminiscent of the classic World War II film, "The Best Years of Our Lives."
The challenge "was to take human beings and put them through hell and wonder how in the world they would approach the world when they came back," Hanks said.
"Part 10 is the first time we went for it," he said.
The new HBO miniseries was born of its predecessor, 2001's acclaimed, Emmy-winning "Band of Brothers," which dramatized the true story of a company of paratroopers fighting in Europe.
"We only told a partial story in `Band,'" Spielberg said. "My own relatives were saying to me, `We all fought in the Pacific. That's a different story. It was jungle warfare.'"
The filmmaker's father, Arnold, battled the Japanese in Burma and an uncle flew B-29s over Japan. Other Pacific theater veterans wrote to Spielberg, "wanting me to tell their story."
The challenge for executive producers Hanks, Spielberg and Gary Goetzman was that the U.S.-Japanese conflict sprawled across a series of remote islands and lacked the European landmarks that gave "Band of Brothers" an instant familiarity.
The men of "The Pacific" fought for dirt on Guadalcanal, New Britain, Pavuvu, Peleliu and Iwo Jima. The miniseries opens shortly after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, follows the path of three young Marines and ends on the home front in 1946 after Japan's surrender.
"You get to see who these men were before they come into the war, where they came from, why they wanted to get into it. ... You get to see how they came out of it, if they did at all," said cast member Joe Mazzello. "You get the full scope of what it's like to be an American Marine in that time."
Mazzello, like his co-stars, plays a real member of the First Marine Division. The miniseries focuses on Eugene B. Sledge (Mazzello) and Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), both privates and authors of memoirs used in developing the miniseries, as well as Sgt. John Basilone (Jon Seda), awarded the Medal of Honor.
"The hardest part was portraying these men and trying to tell their stories truthfully," said Dale, a sentiment echoed by Mazzello and Seda during a joint interview.
Even as the producers vowed to go deep into the truth of the Pacific fight and whether U.S. troops emerged as heroic or not, producer Goetzman said he eventually realized, "You just can't help but have such an unabiding respect for these vets."
According to Hanks, the Pacific theater they faced was far different from the European one.
"The war in the Pacific was more like the wars we've seen ever since, a war of racism and terror, a war of absolute horrors, both on the battlefield and in the regular living conditions," he said.
Besides the suffering faced by soldiers, there are scenes in the miniseries depicting Japan's forced use of civilian islanders as unwilling suicide bombers. In one scene, a woman is blown up by a body bomb; her infant is in her hands.
"We want the viewing public to be prepared that there is a level of savagery in `The Pacific' that is more intense than in `Band of Brothers,'" Spielberg said.
"Anything less than the graphic nature of that war, or for that matter any war, would have been met by scorn by the veterans who fought in it," he said. "It would have just been one more Hollywoodized portrayal of an event that rends your body ... and often doesn't create even a memory of your existence. That's war, that's what happens."
Co-executive producer Bruce McKenna, a writer who started research for "The Pacific" shortly after working on "Band of Brothers," said the violence is historically accurate.
Okinawa was the site of the "most horrible battle that Americans fought in World War II," he said. "There were 8 million artillery rounds fired, one every second."
The estimated death toll, according to several historical accounts, included more than 100,000 Japanese troops, at least 75,000 Okinawans and more than 12,000 U.S. troops.
Australia stood in for most of the miniseries' locations, including the war zones and U.S. scenes, during more than a year of filming from August 2007 to May 2008. More than 90 sets were built, with 62,000 tons of earth excavated at a quarry outside of Melbourne to build Iwo Jima and Okinawa battlefields.
There were six writers and six directors on the project, with retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye serving as military adviser as he did on "Band of Brothers."
The actors acknowledge that conditions fell short of actual war but were hellish nonetheless.
"You were not comfortable on that set for one day," said Mazzello, with 110-degree weather that made clothes burn against skin and with an unending supply of flies "trying to get in your nose and eyes."
"They actually CGI'ed out flies because there were too many on our faces," Seda said, using shorthand for computer-generated imagery.
Spielberg and Hanks are intent on honoring both history and those who lived it with their World War II films, helping to narrow what Spielberg calls "the generation gap" between his father's generation and the ones that followed.
There are other ambitions for their latest project. Asked if they expect "The Pacific" to resonate with viewers when it comes to the conflicts America faces today, Hanks responded quickly.
"We want it to resonate completely," he said. "The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs, from a civilization that didn't recognize the advancement of human kind.
"Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?" he asked, referring to the U.S.-Middle Eastern conflict.
He noted that Americans who once bitterly dismissed the Japanese as barbaric now accept them as friends and equals.
"Right now we're facing a different part of the world where they view us and we view them as an aberration of humanity," Hanks said. "There's a possibility that somewhere down the line, 60 years from now, we can look at the people that are trying to kill us and we are killing now as we do the Japanese today."
The two Hollywood A-listers acknowledge that their earliest collaboration, a slight 1986 film comedy in which Hanks starred and that Spielberg produced, gave no hint of their future roles as respected war chroniclers.
"When we first worked together, on `The Money Pit,' if somebody had come to me and said, `You two guys are gonna get a job telling historical stories ... more specifically, World War II history,' I would have said, `You're nuts,'" Hank said, smiling broadly.
Utah Bob
03-11-2010, 09:33
The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs, Hard to argue with that. However.....
He probably should have stopped talking right there. His subsequent statements indicate a lack of understanding of many issues. He 's very close to being an apologist and equating the US and Japan as equally guilty in World War II.
The antihero
03-11-2010, 10:09
Hard to argue with that. However.....
Definitely, and the Pacific wasn't the only teather of WWII where that occurred, just think at how the nazis looked at eastern europeans. As a matter of fact, that is not uncommon phenomena in war in general. Anyway in my opinion what he's doing is just oversimplifying the issue and make a selective use of historical examples to push his own agenda. Whatever that is.
"........ The miniseries opens shortly after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, follows the path of three young Marines and ends on the home front in 1946 after Japan's surrender........."
Interesting place to start as Pearl Harbor is what set the "Tone" of the war with Japan.
Racism? Is it racism to demonize and make a caricature of your enemy?
I think all sides did that.
Disclaimer - this post is not in any way to be taken as trying to say that there was not racism in some of the actions our side did - to them and to us. Japanese Americans were treated far worse than German Americans or Italian Americans. Just making a point with propaganda.
As stated on another thread, absolutely can't wait for it to come out this weekend. Should be a good series. Comments like that will happen like you all stated when actors don't know when to shut-up. Just sticking to promoting the movie and not discuss what you think you know about history.
Hard to argue with that. However.....
He probably should have stopped talking right there. His subsequent statements indicate a lack of understanding of many issues. He 's very close to being an apologist and equating the US and Japan as equally guilty in World War II.
I'm looking forward to the series, "With The Old Breed" is one of my favorite reads. I agree with the notion in geopolitics there are no friends, just shared interests. Mr. Hanks' point goes both ways, allies can become enemies. As folks have pointed out both sides were brutal in that war.
Interestingly enough, George Friedman has a theory that Japan once again, not China (income gap implosion) will be our foe in the Pacific later this century. He points out Japan has no natural resources and an aging declining population. They have historically opposed immigration, instead expanding outwards. No island nation, especially one dependent on trade wants her sea lanes controlled by a foreign navy. Finally he believes the Japanese have already rebuilt a capable regional military force, posses advanced technological capacity , and the cultural discipline to go back to the historic militaristic culture they have only shunned since 1945. If the future mirrors the past, competition for energy resources in the region could possibly lead to a conflict of interest, and a US embargo, the last time this happened we got Pearl Harbor...
Far fetched perhaps, I'd like to think democracy and advances in communication make this less likely, but then war is part of the human condition.
FYI, The Time article cited in the OP makes the following points about Mr. Hanks's knowledge of the Pacific War.Hanks first comprehended just how immense his own deficit in Pacific-theater history was while making Saving Private Ryan. Around that time, novelist Nora Ephron (who wrote the screenplay for Sleepless in Seattle, which starred Hanks) sent him the two-volume, 1,882-page Library of America Reporting World War II: American Journalism (1938 to 1946) as a gift. Hanks grew intensely interested in all things related to the Pacific campaign — not necessarily the big names like Tojo or Ernest King, but the 3rd Marine Division, which was ambushed by snipers at Guam, or the intricacies of Operation Detachment at Iwo Jima. Print journalists like Robert Sherrod (on Tawara) and Ted Nakashima (on U.S.-Japanese concentration camps) were eye-openers. "I went on a reading rampage," he recalls. "There is a fabulous book called The Fall of Japan. I got heavily into William Manchester and John Hersey."
FWIW, the standard work on the role of anti-American and anti-Japanese racism in the Pacific War remains John W. Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986).
MOO, there's a slight chance that Mr. Hanks knows what he's talking about when it comes to the Pacific War.
Utah Bob
03-11-2010, 15:15
MOO, there's a slight chance that Mr. Hanks knows what he's talking about when it comes to the Pacific War.
No argument there. I believe he does.
However, his other statement reveals that perhaps he should do some research on Islamic Fundamentalism and the Mid East. "Right now we're facing a different part of the world where they view us and we view them as an aberration of humanity," Hanks said. "There's a possibility that somewhere down the line, 60 years from now, we can look at the people that are trying to kill us and we are killing now as we do the Japanese today."
The reason that the Japanese no longer want to kill us is that they lost and we forced the Emperor to disavow his "God" status and permanently changed their political and economic system.
Looking forward to the series.
For those of us who grew up watching Victory at Sea on Saturday mornings...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ausVC2NhAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-gaMiRYyAQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di1vX-9dObg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmxmhxtckFQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnBHdjIKwyA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Qfw5W_sKk&feature=related
And FWIW - I was always led to believe the underlying premise of WW2 - in general - was racist - ideologically speaking.
Richard
greenberetTFS
03-12-2010, 13:32
For those of us who grew up watching Victory at Sea on Saturday mornings...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ausVC2NhAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-gaMiRYyAQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di1vX-9dObg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmxmhxtckFQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnBHdjIKwyA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Qfw5W_sKk&feature=related
And FWIW - I was always led to believe the underlying premise of WW2 - in general - was racist - ideologically speaking.
Richard
Richard,
I was a teenager when the series came out,you had to have been a tiny tot...;)
Big Teddy :munchin
Utah Bob
03-12-2010, 13:56
For those of us who grew up watching Victory at Sea on Saturday mornings...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ausVC2NhAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-gaMiRYyAQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di1vX-9dObg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmxmhxtckFQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnBHdjIKwyA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Qfw5W_sKk&feature=related
And FWIW - I was always led to believe the underlying premise of WW2 - in general - was racist - ideologically speaking.
Richard
Got the whole series on DVD. I watch it about twice a year. I bought the LP album with lots of photos when I was about 13. Best musical score for a TV series ever!
ZonieDiver
03-13-2010, 10:43
Got the whole series on DVD. I watch it about twice a year. I bought the LP album with lots of photos when I was about 13. Best musical score for a TV series ever!
Ditto. I found the dvd in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart (which says something about the US of A to me...) and watch it often. To me, the fact that is was made by a major network and shown in prime time speaks of an America that is waaay different from the America we know today.
And FWIW - I was always led to believe the underlying premise of WW2 - in general - was racist - ideologically speaking........
There are many who would argue that is was economic - with the racist portion secondary and coming as a way to focus the people on a common enemy.
robert2854
03-13-2010, 11:27
Hanks needs to tighten his panties and let out his girdle. fIRST oFF THE jAPANESE ATTACKED US AND BY OUR STATNDARS THEY WOULD BE CONSIDIERED UN-HUMAN. i THINK THAT we first fire bombed Germany in the WWII.. Other than the Doolittle Raid which was in 1942, before the Battle of Midway, we didn't bomb Japan until relatively late in the war. My uncle who was a USN Torpedo plane pilot was captured as a POW and spent the last year and a half of the wa in a prison camp in Tokoyo, at the end of the war and said the best morale builder of the POW,s was the fire bombing of Tokyo. As I remember the first fire bombing was in Dresden, Germany. So where is this Racism thing coming from. Hanks is an idiot and must be getting his ROLES mixed up because what says sounds as if it is coming from an AIDS ravaged idiot. Our war against terrosism now is against anyone who terrorizes us or promotes it. It seems last week it was big news that the Pakistanios caught an american(white) born male(ADAM) and we cheered it. Now it seems he wasn't the Adam on the most wanted list, but another american (white) who was a member of Al-Quida or the Talibon.
mojaveman
03-13-2010, 11:32
For those of us who grew up watching Victory at Sea on Saturday mornings...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ausVC2NhAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-gaMiRYyAQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di1vX-9dObg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmxmhxtckFQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnBHdjIKwyA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Qfw5W_sKk&feature=related
And FWIW - I was always led to believe the underlying premise of WW2 - in general - was racist - ideologically speaking.
Richard
I really enjoyed "The World at War" series that came out around 1970. In particular I found the history on the Eastern Front to be very interesting. The Germans and Russians were about as ruthless to each other as the Americans and Japanese were in the Pacific Theater. One of my favorite operations to study is the battle of Kursk.
There are many who would argue that is was economic - with the racist portion secondary and coming as a way to focus the people on a common enemy.
Cogent arguments have beeen made that the major antagonists of both theaters were ideologically driven by powerful ages old animosities and delusions of manifest racial superiority which long predated the existant economic struggles of the period - the war crimes trials in Germany and Japan were all about philosophical differences in economic ideologies. :rolleyes:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
There are many who would argue that is was economic - with the racist portion secondary and coming as a way to focus the people on a common enemy.
I agree with Pete. The war (WWII), like many wars, was fought over natural resources. Hitler wanted to control human labor, human thought and human action. Japan attacked us for one simple reason, we cut them off of their oil supply. Japan controlling the Pacific was key in their dominance.
What sold the general masses of Japan, was the thought that their Emperor was Deity. Their right to supperiority, all things under heaven, under their charge, was nothing more than propaganda by Japanese spin doctors.
German citizens fell under the same traps of German spin doctors. Hitler was a prophet to many, a devil to most.
Had American arrived any later than they had in Europe, British air power finally succuming to German advances, Europe whould have fallen to total Nazi rule. Russia and Germany would have settled their differences, and begun plans for western control, by way of Venezuela or Brazil.
At the end of the day, American would have failed, and Japan would be Germany's next target. Japan being the lessor race to their own.
Wet Dog
p.s., Good thing Captain America, Superman, and SGT Rock showed up!
We also had the advantages of Area 51 and the really cool space stuff technology.
Had American arrived any later than they had in Europe, British air power finally succuming to German advances, Europe whould have fallen to total Nazi rule. Russia and Germany would have settled their differences, and begun plans for western control, by way of Venezuela or Brazil.
I respectfully disagree in part, while the British were no threat to the continent, the RAF winning the Battle of Britain had ended German plans for operation Sea Lion. So Hitler turned his attention to hit Stalin before Stalin hit him. I do agree the outcome would have been very much in doubt without American intervention, but it was our economic power initially since we had let our military slide after WW1 and had to rebuild. Specifically, the Lend Lease, helping guard convoys in the Atlantic, and perhaps most importantly shipping tons of equipment and supplies to the Soviets. I recall reading of 280 divisions in the German Army, 200 were on the Eastern Front, so while I don't think WW2 could have been won without America, I can see how the Russians feel they did the heavy lifting?
I watched the first episode last night. It looks like it will be a pretty good story.
alright4u
03-15-2010, 09:14
Definitely, and the Pacific wasn't the only teather of WWII where that occurred, just think at how the nazis looked at eastern europeans. As a matter of fact, that is not uncommon phenomena in war in general. Anyway in my opinion what he's doing is just oversimplifying the issue and make a selective use of historical examples to push his own agenda. Whatever that is.
This jerk with his intellect larger then life and his opinions based on movie roles -never graduated from college. He studies for a role, so; he and Alec Baldwin have been there.
The left is home to many so called educated idiots. The problem is their degrees are usually lacking unless honorary.
I never saw the movie, as Hanks went from that idiotic shrimp boat role and running across the USA, which I am certain no Vietnam Vet I know of can identify with. Then he gets into saving a private after D Day. Yeah, we all know how the military lets other units into their flank all the time.
Hollywood cannot even get a historic fact correct in any movie if it interferes with their liberal cause.
Utah Bob
03-16-2010, 17:17
Well, I watched Episode 1.
It's no Band of Brothers. No buildup and character development. Just wham-bam we're in combat. I had a hard time telling the three main characters from everybody else.
The Captain who railed against "the yellow bastards" naturally turned out to be an incompetent coward. A bit of liberal thinking creeping in there. Of course at the time everybody railed at the "yellow bastard Japs".
Looks like it might turn a little touchy feely to me with the scene of the one Japanese soldier after the battle being shot up by the Marines for sport.
Time will tell. I'll give it a few more episodes, but I gotta tell you. I'm disappointed.
FWIW the medic being hit by friendly fire the first night for wandering off in the dark, and the Captain cowering in a hole are both straight out of " Helmet For My Pillow" by Leckie, the lone Japanese soldier being shot up I didn't see, that's Hollywood...
Clint Eastwood didn't show Japanese atrocities in "Letters from Iwo Jima" either, and there certainly were chilling ones in other books on the battle.
GratefulCitizen
03-16-2010, 22:47
Fortunately, we don't have to rely on Hollywood's interpretation of events.
Pfc. James A. Donahue served with H company, 2nd battalion, 1st Marine Division during Guadalcanal.
He kept a journal.
http://guadalcanaljournal.com/The-Journal.html
The stories sound very familiar.
My grandfather was in the same battalion at Guadacanal, E company; turned 21 while on the island.
Concerning brutality/hatred/racism:
What he spoke of in his later years indicated that the brutality was worse than what history books record.
He was generally a patient, tolerant man.
However, 40 years after the war ended, he was still quite upset to see Japanese cars being sold here.
Different time in history, different culture; it's not reasonable to judge events through today's eyes.
My dad was in the PTO - Australia - New Guinea - Philippines - he was on Uthili Atoll as a part of Halsey's staff preparing for the invasion of Japan when the war ended - never talked much about it and would not buy anything marketed as being made in Japan.
OTOH - many of our close family friends were Japanese Americans and he felt we had treated them wrongly during the war - many were still mistreated after the war - I grew up knowing many who were interred and it's not a simple topic to discuss even today - growing up where I grew up, racism as I knew it was mostly an anti-Japanese and Mexican thing, and not what we saw on the evening news and in the Life magazine pictorials.
In the Florin-Elk Grove area, there were many Japanese Americans who were interred and local farmers voluntarily maintained their homesteads for them until their return. One family friend we knew who had an Ag Exemption and was tending half a dozen such farmsteads volunteered for the service in 1944 because he said he needed the break as it was wearing him out - he wound up in the Army in the ETO.
Attempting to understand any war is not a simple task and can vary greatly from teller to teller - as we always said, "What's the difference between a fairy tale and a war story? A fairy tale begins with 'Once upon a time...' and a war story begins with 'This is no s***...'" ;)
And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 :munchin
My dad was in the PTO - Australia - New Guinea - Philippines - he was on Uthili Atoll as a part of Halsey's staff preparing for the invasion of Japan when the war ended
Richard,
This made me think of something a Belgian gentleman mentioned to me at Ypres. He said if you notice there were significantly fewer German, French, or English artists, poets, or writers of significance in the 1920's relative to say Spanish ones. He often wondered how much progress was buried in Flander's fields. I think of the invasion of Japan the same way, seeing how brutal Iwo Jima and Okinawa were, the cost of Operation Downfall would have been staggering for American society on so many levels. I'm curious if Mr. Hanks will address this question.
I can't get too worked up at the accusation that there was/is racism on both sides. It is a given, though not as widespread as hollywood wants us to believe.
I just hate it when "entertainment" gets treated as a historical documentary. What makes me mad is when this sort of thing is used as curriculum for US history in high school classes instead of balanced first hand accounts, of which there are plenty.
I can't get too worked up at the accusation that there was/is racism on both sides. It is a given, though not as widespread as hollywood wants us to believe.
I just hate it when "entertainment" gets treated as a historical documentary. What makes me mad is when this sort of thing is used as curriculum for US history in high school classes instead of balanced first hand accounts, of which there are plenty.
This show is simply a well told story, largely based on facts it is a story told in a way that will spark imagination and interest in the topic that can then be balanced with that plethora of first hand accounts.
This show is simply a well told story, largely based on facts it is a story told in a way that will spark imagination and interest in the topic that can then be balanced with that plethora of first hand accounts.
If it sparks interest and is a piece of the pie then I'm for it. I have seen some very lazy teachers that let dvd's tell American History. Racism should not be the focal point of World War 2. Race is an element of this enormous event of history but is not the main story IMO. I'm not bashing THE PACIFIC. I liked Band of Brothers and most historical entertainment. As far as liberal actors/directors/producers go, with the exception of Sean Penn, and a few other idiots, I can suspend my view of the man from the movie itself. I do get touchy however when good entertainment becomes historical fact in the minds of young people.
The Reaper
03-17-2010, 11:49
After the atrocities of the Bataan Death march and the subsequent treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese (not to mention the treatment of the indigeneous people they conquered), I would just say that I would not worry overly about the suffering of any Japanese combatants I encountered.
If that makes me a bad person, so be it.
TR
greenberetTFS
03-17-2010, 12:05
After the atrocities of the Bataan Death march and the subsequent treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese (not to mention the treatment of the indigeneous people they conquered), I would just say that I would not worry overly about the suffering of any Japanese combatants I encountered.
If that makes me a bad person, so be it.
TR
"At last",after reading the comments so far,no one has come out and really said what needed to be said.......... So if I'm also a bad person,so be it.
Big Teddy :munchin
mojaveman
03-17-2010, 12:23
I can't get too worked up at the accusation that there was/is racism on both sides. It is a given, though not as widespread as hollywood wants us to believe.
I just hate it when "entertainment" gets treated as a historical documentary. What makes me mad is when this sort of thing is used as curriculum for US history in high school classes instead of balanced first hand accounts, of which there are plenty.
Good post,
In a college history class I once listened to a song from the early 40s that was titled "Oh, we got to slap the dirty little Jap!" It was pretty funny but would be very politically incorrect in this era. My father used to tell me about all of the cultural animosity that he could remember in the media (radio) during the war years. Some of it was pretty satirical.
ZonieDiver
03-17-2010, 12:32
Good post,
In a college history class I once listened to a song from the early 40s that was titled "We got to slap the dirty little Jap!" It was pretty funny but very politically incorrect in this era. My father used to tell me about all of the cultural animosity that he could remember in the media (radio) during the war years. Some of it was pretty satirical.
I grew up watching the "old" Popeye cartoons. They were very derogatory toward the "Japs"! Then one day... they disappeared from the airwaves. Go figure.
greenberetTFS
03-17-2010, 14:52
After my Dad returned from serving in the pacific,(He was a combat medic in the army),he could never understand why we gave so much aid to rebuilding Japan....He wouldn't buy any thing that was made in Japan, period !....... I guess he just saw too much to forgive and forget..........:(
Big Teddy :munchin
Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be. ;)
Richard
When considering the role of race in U.S. Japanese relations in the decades leading up to the Pacific War as well as in the conduct of operations during that conflict, I think some American policy makers and many citizens might have done well to consider a point George Washington made in his farewell address. Source is here (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp).The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.