Posted on 03/06/2010 10:05:05 AM PST by jimbo123
To the young Tom Hanks, history was as dull as an algebra equation. For Hanks — a classic baby boomer, born in 1956 — World War II was just a string of long-ago muzzle flashes in black-and-white. Yet he did have a more direct connection to the global cataclysm. His father had been a U.S. Naval mechanic (second class) in World War II. But Amos Hanks wasn't the type to tell his son tales of bravery and sacrifice. "Growing up, I always knew Dad was somewhere in the Pacific fixing things," Hanks says. "He had nothing nice to say about the Navy. He hated the Navy. He hated everybody in the Navy. He had no glorious stories about it."
-snip-
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?"
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
But wait. It’s seared in his memory.
I really didn’t want to know how ignorant Hanks was of history. I know there’s a lot I don’t know, but please... And I really, really enjoy Apollo 13. (sigh)
Tom Hanks would never do a movie about Unit 731 and the unspeakable horrors that were committed against civilians and POWs by the Japanese.
Go drive your Mitsubishi into friggin' wall. It is better than the guys that drove theirs into our ships.
Sorry 'bout that. /rant off
Those pictures broke my heart. As I think of My Seventy Six Year Old Japanese Mother, these hurtful terms certainly do not apply to her. I also think of my Late Father, who was American and how he stated that what was done then needed to be done to defeat the enemy. I apologize about being emotional as this subject matter is very sensitive to me. Lastly, God Bless the United States Military, as my Late Father served in it.
The worst example of this kind of revisionism was in the Bruckheimer film Pearl Harbor, a scene where Japanese bomber pilots were trying to warn away a group of little leaguers who'd stopped playing their game to watch the attack unfold. Ridiculous attempt to personalize the attackers and done only to make the movie more palatable to overseas audiences.
And yet, even in that, he deliberately and dishonestly rewrote history. Jim Lovell was not the astronaut who said "OK Houston, we've had a problem here ". It was Jack Swigart.
Mr. Tom might want to look into what the Asian reaction was when Hiroshima & Nagasaki went up in smoke —there was open celebrating and joyous laughter throughout almost every capital the Japanese Army occupied.
The Japanese see things in hierarchical & racial terms, and they (correctly) believed they were the top dogs of Asia —they acted that way, too. In Japan, this means that the most powerful person behaves and speaks in a way that confirms that person’s position, and the lower ranked person also behaves and speaks in a manner befitting their low rank —this happens nearly 100 times every day to the average Japanese person. It’s so completely natural that it is not even contemplated. Didn’t bow low enough? Your mother or father (but later more forcefully your Judo coach) will help you out with that, yes.
Ever wonder why the US occupation of Japan went pretty smoothly...? It wasn’t only because their Emperor ended things, no. It was also because we had demonstrated that WE, instead, were the top dogs.
Nothing about Japan then or now really changed —there was just corrective action taken that brought perceptions into line with realities, that’s all.
It will happen again, although I’m not sure with the same happy effects as last time.
The only country that has similar racial/hierarchical views of things is probably Korea, in particular North Korea.
Hey, Tom. Ever hear of the Bataan Death March??
You mean his best friend wasn't really Wilson?
Looks like Hanks is beginning to actually live the part he played in Forrest Gump. MEGA TWIT!!
I forgot — Mr. Tom Hanks might also want to check into who in Nanking was comparitively merciful to the Chinese people butchered there.
The man was a NAZI. I’m completely serious —the Third Reich had a consulate there, and in order to see what was really going on there, the staff simply had to peer out of their office windows.
Legally speaking, the consulate land IS Germany, and so they were able to take into German protection several hundred Chinese peasants, and save them from rape, bayonetting, or 100 other bad things that went on in Nanking every minute for weeks.
The Nazi diplomat’s name was John something or other, and as punishement he was recalled back to Germany —the Japanese troops were Nazi allies, legally, right?
But much as it sounds like I’m lifting up Nazis, my objective is to give a comparitive insight over who was NICER —nazis or Japanese soldiers, and the answer was NAZIS.
Which SHOULD BE highly instructive to Tom Hanks. BUT I DOUBT IT.
As far as I know, no Allie troops resorted to cannibalism. However there are confirmed cases of Japanese Soldiers doing it. I guess we made them “do it: according to Hanks logic.
The Japanese butchered them
wonder if steven spielberg will mention that.
Bradley also mentioned what happened to a friend of his who was taken prisoner by Japanese on Iwo Jima.
Both sides were reduced to brutal behavior. The difference is the Japanese institutionalized such behavior, on our side it was an anomaly.
Actually it is but her first name is Rita.
My sis-in-law is from Singapore. Her dad lost every single member of his family to the Japanese occupation. He only survived because he was too young to haul off to a work camp.
Japan did some truly evil things during WWII.
In the Hanksian school of history, America fought the Germans because they were evil rascists bent on the destruction of life as we know it and we fought the Japanese mainly because they're Asian. What a dumba**.
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