Tom Hanks says Pacific Marines racist

[dross]

Actors have tremendous charisma and presence. Some of them who are ignorant and stupid can credibly play geniuses and the great credibly. They often make their point better than someone a thousand times more qualified. This might not fool some of the folks here, but it fools a lot of people.

I'm not a college snob. I do think that a guy who makes his living pretending, who never finished college should be very careful holding forth about complex issues unless he's made a careful study of those issues, in which case it would probably be obvious anyway. Hanks appears to be a bright guy who knows enough to be dangerous and to find some evidence that supports his word view. His problem is that he takes one small piece of the puzzle and uses it to support a lot more weight than it could carry.

That's the problem with an unthinking world view. You already KNOW the answers before you learn about the issue. Then you discard the evidence that doesn't support your view, while enlarging the evidence that does.

I've seen it on this site, especially as it concerns the history of our country. There are lots of inconvenient facts that are ignored becuase they don't fit someone's preconceived views. Like the fact that our founders were politicians, and elections have always been as dirty and nasty as they are now, and that compromise has always been the way the sausage got made.

 

[dross]

No...and yes. The Constitution (written by the Allied Occupation) supposedly guarantees protection from discrimination, but the Japanese version uses the word "citizen", while the (original language) English version says "the people". In practice, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against people for reasons that are illegal in the U.S.



This is incorrect. "Barbarian" directly translated in Japanese is 野蛮人 'Yabanjin'. Although the first Europeans were referred to (the very similar) as "Southern Barbarians" (南蛮人 'Nanbanjin'), this faded out of use during the Meiji Restoration and was replaced by "Other country person" (異国人 'Ikoku-jin'), which was gradually replaced after the war by the current, official term "Outside country person/outsider" AKA 'Foreigner' (外国人/外人 'Gaikokujin/Gaijin'). We get called "gaikokujin" on the news, and "gaijin-san" on the street, and just "gaijin" by the haters...
Frankly, I think I'd rather be thought of as a 'barbarian' than an "outsider"...

I'll bow to your superior knowledge of Japan. I'm certainly no expert, and I have never lived there. I have heard the barbarian thing several times, no way to know if it's true.

I was stationed in Germany for four years. One of the more amusing conversations was to argue with the Germans about race in America. Many Germans are terribly critical of how we supposedly treat black folks here. I countered to one very sincere young woman that the way Germany treated Turkish guest workers could be viewed as racism. She looked at me dumbfounded and said, "But... they're Turks!"

Anyone who thinks the U.S. is particularly racist needs to look around the world a little.

 

[Eddie]

No...and yes. The Constitution (written by the Allied Occupation) supposedly guarantees protection from discrimination, but the Japanese version uses the word "citizen", while the (original language) English version says "the people". In practice, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against people for reasons that are illegal in the U.S.

Yes. I recall reading a very interesting article about this. It had to do with the rights of the owners of bath houses to bar persons because they "did not look Japanese". The bath houses argued that they would lose business because Japanese would not visit a bath house that allowed foreigners. One of the guys that won his suit against one of the bath houses won in part because he was a naturalized citizen and therefore could not be refused.

 

[smoking357]

When you encounter terms like "kraut", "gook", "towelhead", "hajji", etc. with reference to enemy soldiers, it certainly sounds racist. How is it not?

Because History is the lies told by the victors, that's how. If we don't want to be recorded as racist, we aren't. You are right. It's necessary to dehumanize the enemy in order to kill him. WWI had the "Huns."

 

[antsi]

I don't read Hanks as specifically saying the Marines were racists. I do think there were racial elements to the thinking on both sides of that war: not specifically the Marines or soldiers on either side, but the entire cultures. Both sides had pretty widespread negative views about the other.

There was a pervasive Japanese belief that Americans were lazy and cowardly and would be easily cowed into submission. This was part of the decision to attack us, which obviously did not work out well for them in the long run.

Widespread American views of the Japanese did not serve us well, particularly in the beginning. The American stereotype of Japanese was that they were servile and inferior, and would not dare attack us. It was impossible for most Americans to believe that the Japanese could produce superior technology - such as carrier aircraft - to Americans. It was a widespread belief that the attack on Pearl Harbor must have been carried out with German assistance, because the lowly Asiatics couldn't possibly have done this by themselves. I actually read an analysis by a US aviation expert at the time, saying that Japanese pilots would be inferior because they were carried around on their mothers' backs as children, and thus could not develop balance and coordination, and that their eyesight was inferior as evidenced by all the Japanese wearing thick glasses. Obviously this moron got his ideas about the Japanese from Hollywood portrayals of Japanese, not from reality.

So, yeah, we had a racist view of the Japanese that they were silly, half-blind, servile people who could not possibly be any danger to us. We were not very well-served by this belief.

None of this is any kind of attack against the Marines. Service people fighting in the Pacific were among the first Americans to realize that the Japanese were actually a formidable enemy and begin to take them seriously.

Every culture has its myths and blind spots. The service men of any culture will generally tend to reflect this: they are a product of their culture. It would only be a criticism of the Marines to say that they were uniquely more racist or misguided than the rest of the US, which was patently not the case. In our case, sailors, soldiers, and Marines were the victims of US racist attitudes - the idea that we had nothing to fear from the silly, bumbling Japanese - than being perpetrators or drivers of those attitudes.

 

[Phil502]

I think Hanks was saying exactly what I said he was.

In the HBO series The Pacific which recently finished, there was 2 parts that mimic what Hanks has said in the interview.

1) There is a part when a guy in bootcamp gets frustrated with the heavy training.
He says "I just want to slap a Jap", John Basilone, MOH winner is his Drill Sergeant
He yells at the guy about the Japanese Soldier deserves respect and is not the big toothed characature that the US Press has made him out to be. Of course thats true
The Japanese soldier did deserve respect for his abilities but dehuminizing was part of the training.

2) In another scene, in despair one Marine says "Why don't they just surrender already?" Eugene Sledge replies "I hope they don't". This is the kill them all attitude that hanks is referring to.

Neither John Basilone or Eugene Sledge is alive to answer whether this stuff happened. I read Eugene Sledges book "In With the Old Breed" years ago and can't remember these small details. I do remember that it was a fantastic first hand account of what these guys went through in the Pacific.


If I was hanks I would stay 10 million light years away from even possibly appearing to insult these guys in any way, shape or form.

Perhaps I read to much into this and my conclusions are off. I do know that Hollywood likes to have it's little shots at all of us ignorant folks.

 

[Johnny C]

I dont give much thought to anything that comes from the Film Actors Guild

 

[Go Devil]

What about the (someone of Japanese descent) hate crimes against the Chinese and Koreans?

The word editied was Nips, Short for Nipponese.

Word Origin & History

Nipponese
"Japanese," 1859, from Nippon, Japanese word for "Japan," from ni(chi) "the sun" + pon, hon "source," which is said to be from Chinese for "rising sun-place."

 

[Son of Liberty]

didnt' we embargo japans trade routes and cut off ninety percent of their incoming oil and supplies? Im pretty sure we did, before they attacked us. In my eyes that is an act of war, period. If some othe country did that to us, or tried to, we would use force. However, who attacked who or who was right dosent matter, the war was over power and money, but there were racist against japanese before the war and more after, its' they american european way to be racist and have the us verus them thought process. Eranger Im sorry for what you went through and the friends you lost but I think it's funny you use the words innocent to describe your friends, if you are talking about your fellow soliders, when you use that word, they are not innocent, no one in a war, of any type is innocent. You cant be innocent and kill at the same time, no matter how it is justified. If your playing the game, your innocence is one of the first things to go.

I also am curious why you are upset with people trying to kill our soliders, we are an invading army, end of story. Therefore, you are going to have people trying to kill you. It's the nature of the beast. Thats what war is, killing. A lot of the people that we are fighting over there now, are fighting us out of vendattea, which is reasonable and understandable, as I know you agree, from previous post.

Sorry for the long post. I think that it is all made to complicated, soliders kill other soliders, that is for the most part, ones fuction. It's what you are trained to do, its what they are trained to do. Hating your enemy clouds your judgement. If you were in his shoes you would likely do the same things.

 

[tenring]

Japs Not Racists?

Massacres and Atrocities of WWII in the Pacific Region