The Pacific: Taking Aim at Hanks’ Yanks

In The Pacific, Tom Hanks is wrong to portray the war against Japan as a war of "terror and racism". In fact, the Marines who fought through the Pacific, island by island, quickly learned respect for Japanese soldiers.

How 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.