> Surprise Party
> by Mickey Z.
>
> >Like a zillion other Americans, I went to see
> >Pearl Harbor on the first day of its release. As I
> >sat there in the jammed bargain matinee, I kept
> >assuring myself that as author of a radical
> >history of WWII, I was merely doing research. Now,
> >I could rant on about the atrocious love story or
> >the film's mind-numbing length but this is not a
> >movie review. This is more like a desperate
> >attempt at context in the face of an onslaught.
> >
> >Much has been made of the decision to make Pearl
> >Harbor "politically correct" by excising any
> >negative references to the Japanese. While I can
> >appreciate the sentiment, this move does the
> >audience a major disservice. In the decades
> >leading up to this battle between colonial powers
> >in the Pacific, negative references played a
> >central role. Ignoring this in the name of Asian
> >box office receipts places December 7, 1941 in a
> >vacuum. Pearl Harbor provides no context so, I,d
> >like to try.
> >
> >The build-up to Pearl Harbor began two decades
> >prior to the attack when, in 1922, the U.S.,
> >Britain, and Japan agreed that the Japanese navy
> >would not be allowed more than 60 percent of the
> >capital ship tonnage of the other two powers. As
> >resentment grew within Japan over this decidedly
> >inequitable agreement, that same year, the United
> >States Supreme Court declared Japanese immigrants
> >ineligible for American citizenship. This decision
> >was followed a year later by the Supreme Court
> >upholding a California and Washington ruling
> >denying Japanese the right to own property. A
> >third judicial strike was dealt in 1924 with the
> >Exclusion Act which virtually banned all Asian
> >immigration. Finally, in 1930, when the London
> >Naval Treaty denied Japan naval hegemony in its
> >own waters, the groundwork for war (and "surprise
> >attacks") had been laid.
> >
> >Upon realizing that Japan textiles were
> >out-producing Lancashire mills, the British Empire
> >(including India, Australia, Burma, etc.) raised
> >the tariff on Japanese exports by 25 percent.
> >Within a few years, the Dutch followed suit in
> >Indonesia and the West Indies, with the U.S. (in
> >Cuba and the Philippines) not far behind. This led
> >to the Japanese claiming (correctly) encirclement
> >by the "ABCD" (American, British, Chinese, and
> >Dutch) powers. Such moves, combined with Japan,s
> >expanding colonial designs, says Kenneth C. Davis,
> >made "a clash between Japan and the United States
> >and the other Western nations over control of the
> >economy and resources of the Far East and Pacific
> >. . . bound to happen."
> >
> >WWII, in the Pacific theater, was essentially a
> >war between colonial powers. It was not the
> >Japanese invasion of China, the rape of Nanking,
> >or the atrocities in Manchuria that resulted in
> >the United States declaring war on the Empire of
> >Japan. It was the attack of three of America,s
> >territories-the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii
> >(Pearl Harbor)-that provoked a military response.
> >
> >On July 21, 1941, Japan signed a preliminary
> >agreement with the Nazi-sympathizing Vichy
> >government of Marshal Henri Pétain, leading to
> >Japanese occupation of airfields and naval bases
> >in Indochina. Almost immediately, the U.S.,
> >Britain, and the Netherlands instituted a total
> >embargo on oil and scrap metal to Japan-tantamount
> >to a declaration of war. This was followed soon
> >after by the United States and Great Britain
> >freezing all Japanese assets in their respective
> >countries. Radhabinod Pal, one of the judges in
> >the post-war Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, later
> >argued that the U.S. had clearly provoked the war
> >with Japan, calling the embargoes a "clear and
> >potent threat to Japan's very existence."
> >
> >Which brings me to those negatives references I
> >mentioned earlier. Self-censorship in the name of
> >profits will mislead movie-goers about the high
> >level of anti-Japanese racism cultivated by the
> >"greatest generation." The Japanese soldiers (and,
> >for that matter, all Japanese) were commonly
> >referred to and depicted as subhuman-insects,
> >monkeys, apes, rodents, or simply barbarians that
> >must be wiped out or exterminated. The American
> >Legion Magazine,s cartoon of monkeys in a zoo who
> >had posted a sign reading, "Any similarity between
> >us and the Japs is purely coincidental" was
> >typical. A U.S. Army poll in 1943 found that
> >roughly half of all GIs believed it would be
> >necessary to kill every Japanese on earth before
> >peace could be achieved. As a December 1945
> >Fortune poll revealed, American feelings for the
> >Japanese did not soften after the war. Nearly
> >twenty-three percent of those questioned wished
> >the U.S. could have dropped "many more [atomic
> >bombs] before the Japanese had a chance to
> >surrender." Eugene B. Sledge, author of With the
> >Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, wrote of his
> >comrades "harvesting gold teeth" from the enemy
> >dead. In Okinawa, Sledge witnessed "the most
> >repulsive thing I ever saw an American do in the
> >war?-when a Marine officer stood over a Japanese
> >corpse and urinated into its mouth. Perhaps Edgar
> >L. Jones, a former war correspondent in the
> >Pacific, put it best when he asked in the February
> >1946 Atlantic Monthly, "What kind of war do
> >civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot
> >prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals,
> >strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy
> >civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed
> >the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the
> >Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make
> >table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their
> >bones into letter openers."
> >
> > And then there was the man who,d eventually give
> >the order to drop atomic bombs on Japanese
> >civilians: "We have used [the bomb] against those
> >who have abandoned all pretense of obeying
> >international laws of warfare, "Harry Truman later
> >explained, thus justifying his decision to nuke a
> >people that he termed "savages, ruthless,
> >merciless, and fanatic."
>
> > Rationality in the Pacific was so rare during WW
> >II that, ironically, it required as a mouthpiece
> >none other than prominent racist Colonel Charles
> >A. Lindbergh, Jr. Repelled by what he saw and
> >heard of U.S. treatment of the Japanese in the
> >Pacific theater, the aviator spoke out. His
> >sentiments are summed up in the following journal
> >entry: "It was freely admitted that some of our
> >soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel
> >and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our
> >men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner
> >or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat
> >the Jap with less respect than they would give to
> >an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost
> >everyone. We claim to be fighting for
> >civilization, but the more I see of this war in
> >the Pacific the less right I think we have to
> >claim to be civilized." When Lindbergh left the
> >Pacific and arrived at customs in Hawaii, he was
> >asked if he had any Japanese bones in his baggage.
> >It was, by then, a routine question
> >
> >Like most Hollywood spectacles, Pearl Harbor is
> >devoid of context. There,s only one line alluding
> >to U.S. economic and legislative provocation prior
> >to December 7, 1941 and no hint at all of the
> >internment camps and atomic bombs yet to come.
> >After three hours, World War II is still "The Good
> >War," America,s honor remains untarnished, and the
> >summer movie season is in full swing.
>
> > Surprise, surprise.
> >
>
>
> (For a free first chapter from Saving Private Power,
and to be able to buy
it for 25% off, check out at
http://www.softskull.com/html/saving.html)
>
>
> >Mickey Z. (Michael Zezima) is the author of Saving
> >Private Power: The Hidden History of "The Good
> > War" (Soft Skull Press, 2000), on which this
> >article is based. He can reached at
> >mzx2 at earthlink.net.
>
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