A Simplistic Look At History

By Semperpapa

I have been looking forward to the HBO mini-series The Pacific coming up later this month. A big fan of the series Band of Brothers, I was thrilled that a similar look would be taken of the war in the Pacific, which would document the brutality and ferocity of that conflict.
I even praised Tom Hanks for his work on the initial series and for wanting to tackle the second front America was involved with, even if the obvious political leanings of the Oscar winning actor are nowhere close to mine. I kept on telling myself “as long as he gives the Veterans the due respect”, I was willing to overlook his Liberal ideology.

For such reason I was somewhat disappointed by Tom Hank’s simplistic look at what WWII represented for our Nation, when, during an interview, he stated that the reason America wanted to kill the Japanese was because they were different. They looked different, they believed different.

Well I have a major problem with Hank’s assertion.
Having been an avid reader of anything related to WWII since I was a little guy, I find the over simplification of such an event, immature and misguided. I would have imagined that having been involved in Saving Private Ryan as an actor and in Band of Brothers as a producer, Tom Hank would have had the opportunity to deepen his historical knowledge and understanding.

Thinking about it, though, those two projects were based on the European theater of Operations and completely disregarded the Pacific side of things. So it is possible that Hank’s concentration on American and Allies efforts to defeat Nazi Germany has not left much time to dig more into the reasons why we fought for the annihilation of Japan. Moreover, Hanks has not offered any such wisdom regarding the annihilation of Nazi Germany. After all they “looked” like us.

I could even understand that Tom, as a good Liberal, would hold America responsible for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, because after all the American fleet was an “imperialistic” obstacle to the “legitimate” expansionist needs of Japan toward South Eat Asia.

The Japanese nation is poor of national resources and the hungry militaristic regime in Tokyo in the 1930s needed the raw material necessary for the industrial expansion of that country.
But the leaders of Japan, with the blessing of the Emperor, were not satisfied by purchasing the raw material, so they decided that the Western Pacific Rim was to be under the sphere of control of Japan.
Imperial Japan begun their expansion war in China, occupying some of the eastern coastal areas, pillaging the natural resources and embarking on a killing spree of the locals that may not have equals. As an example one must only look at the Rape of Nanking, during which Japanese forces, under command of Gen. Matsui killed, over 200,000 civilians, mostly just for “sport”.
This 1937 event was met by protestations on the part of European and American leadership, but Europe was still trying to work the Munich agreement with Hitler and America was fully in its isolationist mode.

The misunderstanding that Tom Hank demonstrates in attributing the determination of the American forces to annihilate the Japanese forces solely on the fact that “they” looked “different” does not speak too highly to my impression of the man.
In asserting that that was the driving force behind campaigns like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Saipan, not only casts a shadow of ignorance on the man, but also cheapens the horrors that American forces had to endure during the island-hopping campaigns.

In the interview, Hank points out his latest project wanted to honor the bravery of the American troops

“…but we also wanted to have people say, ‘we didn’t know our troops did that to Japanese people.’”…

Is Tom Hank referring to the Japanese civilians? I am not sure, but I may have an answer after watching the mini-series.

The main difference between the pain inflicted upon the civilian population of Germany and of Japan is that the US used atomic bombs on Japan and not on Germany. And the use of those extreme weapons was successful in forcing the Japanese Emperor to an unconditional surrender. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually saved Japan from complete national annihilation, because of the very fact that the Japanese culture was so different from ours, in so far that it did not allow for surrender, that death was preferable to surrender. That may work fine for members of the Japanese military, but had the collateral effect to condemn innocent civilians to the same fate.

There is some truth to Hanks statement, though. The American and Allied forces advancing in the Pacific faced a level of atrocities that would shake even the saltiest Marine Gunnery Sergeant. Fanaticism of the highest degree, torture and murder of civilian, especially in the Philippines, and the systematic murder of POWs were factors that increasingly hardened the warriors on an hourly base.
And in places like Okinawa and Saipan, the advancing forces were treated to an onslaught of Japanese civilians committing suicide, having been brainwashed by the Japanese Military that they would be subject to unspeakable horrors if they surrendered to the Marines. So in that respect atrocities committed against those civilians were perpetrated by their own.

Tom Hanks does not recognize the complexity of that conflict, oversimplifying it by labeling it as just a reaction to the somatic and cultural differences America saw in the Japanese people.
Perhaps clarity is obfuscated by his political leanings as he compared the WWII Pacific campaign to what America is doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Possibly, Mr. Hanks should get himself more informed about the type of enemy we are facing today, beyond the boundaries of external looks and religious faith. Maybe reading some of the material written by David Bellavia, Marcus Luttrel, Michael Yon or Bing West would give him a clue.
What it really comes down to is that our society is based on a culture of life, where life is to be preserved even if it means having to stand up and fight for it, against a culture of death where any life can be taken, even an innocent life, for sake of theocratic power.

I applaud Tom Hanks for his support of the Veterans, but just appearing in or producing or funding a movie or series is only meaningful if he would take the time to become more in tune with the totality of the subject.
He just took a very simplistic stand on probably the most complex human endeavor: war.

Just my thoughts.