Gettting it Wrong About the Pacific War
Tags: World War Two.
From Victor Davis Hanson:
Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.
“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, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers. All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus.
Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous.
Indeed, it is ludicrous. Hanson goes on to explain in detail why Hanks’ view is entirely wrong. But why would someone like Hanks – who has done really good work for our veterans – get it so wrong?
Mostly its because hardly anyone knows about the war with Japan. Outside of scholars and the vanishing veterans of that war (my father was one of the younger Pacific War vets – and he died last year at 82), there just isn’t much public knowledge about this war. This is sad on a lot of levels, not least of which is that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines defeated enemies who would have crushed anyone else (the rule of thumb is that once a unit suffers about 30% casualties, it’s done as a fighting unit until replenished – the 29th Marines on Okinawa suffered 81% casualties…and won).
The war had MacArthur’s brilliant campaign against the Japanese culminating in the liberation of the Philippines. The largest sea battles in history which including stunning, against-all-odds victories at Midway and Leyte Gulf. Campaigns which surged across thousands of miles of ocean and land. And most Americans have heard almost none of it – perhaps a bit about Pearl Harbor and then the bad, mean Americans drop atomic bombs on Japan. And someone like Hanks opines that we fought because we hated their race.
It is stupid. But it is also frustrating. Its like America’s glories have been shoved down the Memory Hole – our past is gutted so that fools can pretend the world is a certain way, when its actually entirely different from that.
One of our tasks over the next few decades will be to instruct the rising generation in the truth about their nation. We must eventually have a time when the glories of our ancestors are known, and honored – when we know the truth, not the fashionable theories of modern sophisticates imposed on the past.
Mark Noonan is co-author (with Matt Margolis) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at Nevada News and Views. Follow Mark on Twitter.
24 Responses to “Gettting it Wrong About the Pacific War”
Caucus of Corruption
Mr. Hanks sad knowledge of world events c. 1930s ` 1940s is a product of a public school education and a libiot worldview.
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Japan was first and throughout at war with fellow Asians in an endeavor to obtain economic parity. This struggle incidentally involved the US as an antagonist to their aspirations.
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“They were out to kill us because our way of living was different.” The Japanese viewed everyone not Japanese as inferior, but at no time entertained Anglo oriented genocide; they had no problem in genocidal rage against their fellow Asiatic (see the Rape of Nanking and subjugation of the Philippines) .
.Otto Preminger once said that actors are merely trained animals who perform on cue and the dumber the animal the better the performance; Tom Hanks gives great performances.
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Tom Hanks; shut up and act.
Our failed educational system is in large part responsible for this, but so are the “progressive” professors whom instruct on their political agenda, not the subject matter per se. The “progressive” movement fails to realize that America was built on, and has been extremely successful because of, the qualities and morals they so strongly oppose. This country is great because of the capitalistic, free market economy approach, and the very hard work on behalf of God fearing, freedom loving, independent minded people who legally immigrated from the medocrity and oppression of socialism and big governments.
Cluster,that is about as well worded as any description of America’s greatness as I have ever heard.
Thanks spook
Tom Hanks has produced “Saving Private Ryan, “Band of Brothers”, and “John Adams”. Please feel free to point out the historical flaws of those films.
Casper,
Why? Such is not at issue here.
Can you read?
Like most drones, he is unwilling to face the fact that his party and beliefs are severely flawed.
Ironically, not only was the war not fought because of racial animosity, it was almost lost because of it (“The Japanese? Attack us? Don’t be ridiculous; they’re yellow.”). Indeed, that same racism that almost cost us the Pacific theater has also dimmed our memory of it. We seek out honor and glory in the European theater, because that is where real wars were fought, against real enemies and real evil who look like us and can therefore be taken seriously. Most of this racial animosity has since faded, but its effects on the gravity of the two theaters remains, and rather confusingly, we went from being Japan’s mortal enemy directly to being its closest friend, which has made it even more difficult to appreciate the fact that we were once at war with them. Maybe someone needs to make a Pacific theater anime.
I never thought of the Bataan Death March as racially motivated. I wonder how Hanks would have handled that march.
What seems to be lost in this controversy is the fact that Hanks and Speilberg always film in other countries. They refuse to pay the CA taxes.
By the way, you aren’t really surprised that some leftist would play the race card are you?
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Mark Noonan says:
March 13, 2010 at 12:31 am
Casper,
Why? Such is not at issue here.
Can you read?”
I can read quite well. You have a post attacking Hanks for not knowing history, yet you ignore his movies and their historical accuracy.
cas,
you do know the difference between PRODUCING, WRITING and ACTING, don’t you?
Hanks comments were not historically accurate and flawed. His ACTING and PRODUCING do not enforce the accuracy of his comments. You are comparing apples and oranges.
Are his performances or productions of his movies (written by someone else, mind you) negate his inaccurate and flawed comments?
How should Oliver Stone’s comments on JFK and other topics should be taken?
Using your logic, Mike Farrel is an authority on war and military history since he played a M*A*S*H surgeon.
The films are not at issue – what is at issue is Hanks’ regurgitation of nonsense about the war.
Mark
Preposterous, and B.S.
any more than Korea or Viet Nam were racist wars.
I fought in Viet Nam, we killed many many N.Vietnamese and I never heard anyone proclaim that we killed them because they were orientals, they were COMMUNISTS period.
I have three good buddies (drinking) who are Vietnamese, and one of my sons dates a Vietnamese girl.
Hanks needs to STFU and pretend he is a soldier.
what about the internment camps?
ask the donk party that had them……..and the KKK, and segregation, and separate schools.
Which ones? The Italian-American Internment Camps or the German-American internment Camps?
tiredoflibbs says:
March 13, 2010 at 12:47 pm
cas,
you do know the difference between PRODUCING, WRITING and ACTING, don’t you?”
Actually I do know the difference.
“A film producer or movie producer is someone who creates the scenes and conditions for making movies. The producer initiates, co-ordinates, supervises and controls matters such as fund-raising, hiring key personnel and arranging for distributors. The producer is involved throughout all phases of the film-making process from development to completion of a project.”
Hanks was a producer on Band of Brothers and John Adams.
casper,
be ‘pecific, what can you tell us about the Pacific? War, that is…
Hanks was still wrong, regardless of his productions.
If you have read the biography of Lindsay “Buck” Compton you would see that Band of Brothers (the miniseries) did take some poetic license.
Again, you are comparing apples to oranges. Hanks was wrong in his comments.
I was down at the elderly fellow’s that I work for today helping him to get some things up off the floor of his garage so that the flood waters wouldn’t do any damage to the tools he had in there…and for some reason as he looked outside, down through his fields appeared as if it were a lake…I am guessing that brought memories of when he fought in the Pacific, he told of the time he arrived in New Guinea and said that they couldn’t get in very close to the sea-ports because there were so many sunken ships that had been bombed, mast’s sticking up out of the water, and said it was the same way on land, completely reduced to rubble. He said though that he remembered the day that they war ended…when they were all in mess hall, and all at once the food trays went flying off the shelves when they bombed a German submarine, and the felt the shock-wave off the bomb, and he said that was when they called the war to an end, and they all got to come home. 21 round-trips he made across the ocean…down the Suez canal, up and down the Mediterranean sea, all over the place.
I thought is was interesting to hear him tell of all this, as there’s a lot of history and geography involved in it, and he not only could tell it, but he lived it.
I never realized that he had been in both the Pacific and Vietnam wars both…so, since I’m not up on such matters, and I didn’t really remember most of what all he told, I think I will sit down with him one day and let him rehearse it again and take notes.
jeremiah,
My father served in the Pacific. He was stationed on Johnson Island working on bombers that went in and out of the theater. In the late 1960s my dad took a teaching job on Guam for two years. While I lived there I visited all of the battle sites and got to know a lot of the people who had been through the Japanese occupation which was pretty brutal. Interestingly, the last Japanese soldier on Guam surrendered a couple of years after we left.
I’ve been studying the Pacific war for years. I’ve stood on the USS Arizona Memorial and talked to a vet who was at pearl Harbor. I have original copies of Stars and Stripes and Life magazines from the thirties and forties which contain dozens of articles about the war. As a teacher, I’ve sponsored a History Day club for ten years and have helped students with probably a dozen projects dealing with the war in the Pacific.
“…viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’…”
Well I am not surprised at the hatre that was felt once word spread about the inhuman mal-treatment of POW’s inflicted by the Japanese
I don’t care what Tom Hanks has produced, acted in, or been involved in in any way—what he said was a slur on America, on American troops in WWII, and a vicious lie.
And anyone familiar with the treatment of their enemies by the Japanese would have a hard time whining about insulting comments made about them, though I am sure knee-jerk Libs will try. There are many accounts of the brutality of the Japanese. There is a reason there is so much animosity toward the Japanese by the Koreans, too. When you treat people the way the Japanese treated people, you have to expect animosity and hostility.
This is the second time in a week or so Hanks has made some utterly stupid and embarrassing comment—sounds like the man is going a little Lindsay Lohan on us.
I’ll bet the same idiots who got all wound up about making well-fed, well-housed, prisoners of war wear panties on their heads at Abu Ghraib were applauding Hanks’ grotesque distortion of history, totally ignorant of the atrocities of Japanese internment camps, death marches, medical experimentation, REAL torture, and the facts of the war.