Pearl Harbor--Historical Revisionism?

Great Debates
1

OK, as a caveat, I have not seen the movie, and am posting this as a response to two quotes from reviews I’ve read. According to The Sun, Disney is trimming the new movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor to please the Japanese and the Germans. A Disney spokesman is quoted as saying, “We’ve tried very hard not to portray the Japanese in a very bad light. They are a huge market and accounted for 20 per cent of profits for Titanic. The film barely refers to the Germans but we have cut the speech for them, too. It won’t make a big difference, most people know who won the war.” And from the Dark Horizons Web site, “There’s a few lines thankfully attempting to give (the Japanese) a bit more depth with the Japanese Admiral indicating that war is an absolute last resort and that the country was basically forced into initiating it.”

Disney doesn’t want to portray the Japanese in a bad light? The Japanese were forced into bombing Pearl Harbor? Has the PC warm fuzzy movement finally managed to distort history to this point, that there no bad guys in WWII and the Axis powers, and the Japanese military regime in particular, were just misunderstood? You should try to sell that to the families of the men killed at Pearl, to the Chinese who were raped and tortured during the Rape of Nanjing, to the Koreans whose women were forced into sexual slavery and whose men were exported to Japan as slave labor.

The generations of Japanese who were born after the war have no idea of how bitter the memories are mostly because the Japanese have never been forced to face up to what they did during the war, as the Germans have been. Disney should be ashamed of kowtowing to the hard-line rightists in Japan who refuse to have accurate history told. (a great country that I have enjoyed spending time in, by the way)

2

Money talks and bovine excrement walks.

But still, I have to wonder if this would happen without the sappy, childish nationalism in recent American war films…

3

Pearl Harbor (the movie) is intended to be nothing more than a big-budget mindless summer flick. Look who’s directing it. Look how much money & effort was poured into the effects.

Given these factors, I think it’s best that the movie try to steer clear of stereotyping where it can. It’s not exactly going to be giving a thoughtful treatment to the war, is it? No. It’s going to be one of those US vs. THEM features in which America gets to be the shiny hero and all others savage villians. Again. I don’t see how such a movie could manage anything less than the ol’ Dirty Jap portrayal, of which Japanese Americans (remember internment camps?) have already seen plenty. I don’t mean to detract from the horror of the Pearl Harbor bombing, but then again, I also don’t see any point in reviving old hatreds and racism through what will no doubt be a blockbuster.

I don’t know that this is the point. This movie is not Schindler’s List, to name one of many thoughtful, painful movies about WWII. It’s not even Saving Private Ryan. Instead, it’s more mindless entertainment where the good guys are pre-determined and unambiguous, and the bad guys are the same. I think even a rudimentary attempt to address the people behind the actions are good. There are history books and, for the less ambitious, plenty of inspired movies about WWII to teach us about Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. This movie ain’t going to do that, and isn’t trying to do that. Jerry Bruckheimer and other sources involved with the movie have made it clear that the storyline is a romance. As in, the main plot of hte movie isn’t even about the war, but about two chiseled Americans finding love. That said, let me repeat: I don’t see any point in reviving old hatreds and racism through what will no doubt be a blockbuster for the masses.

4

'Tain’t “warm-and-fuzzy PC revisionism.” It’s profits, pure and simple. If the studios had solid market data indicating that fat guys who enjoyed getting anally raped by dogs accounted for 20% of the box office, you can be assured they’d find a way to include a scene of Marlon Brando being mounted by a rottweiler.

5

Well, interning Japanese-Americans was a shameful blot on our history, but, disgraceful as that episode was, the U.S. didn’t perform medical experiments on internees, as the Japanese did in Unit 731, in Harbin, China. We didn’t shoot people, we didn’t torture people, we didn’t routinely behead prisoners. Yeah, I had serious twinges of guilt when I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I appreciate that in wars there is often ambiguity, but not in Pearl Harbor. The Japanese behaved foully in WWII, and saying that the Allies and the Axis were morally equivalent is a lie.

I am absolutely against racism and anti-Japanese propoganda. Does being sensitive mean that we blind ourselves to history?

6

  1. It’s a fictional movie, not a documentary.

  2. It’s Disney, which cares little for anything beyond cash. They aren’t rewriting scripts simply to be PC but to better attract the foreign markets, which equals more Mickey Bucks. If they were simply trying to be PC, they would have the same version for everyone.

  3. If this movie creates prejudice… If people in this country see it and suddenly cry out “Oh shit, the japanese were the enemy back then!!!”… If old hatreds are reignited simply by this “love story”… guess what? The old hatreds and prejudice were pre-existing OR they have never heard of the Pearl Harbor attack until now.

7

goboy: Well I’m of two minds on this. On this point…

…I absolutely agree we should not.

On the other hand given the narrow scope of this film ( one single battle ), I don’t see a real need to go out of the way to dehumanize the Japanese either. Obviously you’re not advocating that - Just that there isn’t much scope to bring the Rape of Nanking into the picture. Some points:

1.)Was the ruling class in Japan at the time hyper-militaristic and xenophobic?
Absolutely.

2.)Did they committ monstrous war crimes, unequaled by anyone in that struggle, short of the Nazi’s?
Absolutely.

3.) Were the Japanese the aggressors?
Absolutely. The attack on Pearl Harbor ultimately sprang from their expansionism.

4.) Were the Japanese forced into war with the U.S.?
Well, in their mind, yes. The U.S. was not on the agenda, being ( the Philipines possibly accepted ) outside of the sphere of Japan’s immediate interests in East Asia. But Japan was being bled white by the U.S. and the Europeans ( principally the Dutch ) in terms of fuel embargoes. Fuel Japan desperately needed. So, again to their line of thinking, they were provoked, indeed forced, into taking the actions they did.

5.)Was the U.S. justified in their embargo?
I think so.

6.) Was the U.S. participating in this embargo for humanitarian reasons ( stopping the dismemberment of China)?
Mostly not. It was a strategic move. The U.S. was playing hardball and were aware there might be consequences.

7.) Were the Japanese 100% behind the idea of attacking the U.S.?
Nope. The Navy was strongly opposed. But the army dominated the government and they were the ones driving expansionism.

8.)Was attacking Pearl Harbor a sound decision in light of Japanese motivation?
Debatable, but I’d give a qualified yes. Nothing wrong with launching an undeclared surprise attack on your enemy. From the Japanese govt. standpoint, it was in fact the morally correct decision to make for the Japanese people.

The fact of the matter is, is that if all this film does is show the Japanese in character saying that they think they are being forced into the attack, I have no problem with that. I’m sure they did believe that. And given a battle where there was minimal collateral damage, showing the Japanese pilots as soldiers just doing their duty seems perfectly reasonable. I think it would be beyond the scope of this film to bring up atrocities elsewhere, except perhaps in passing ( and I would have no trouble at all with that, as long as, as you implied, it wasn’t just anti-Japanese ranting designed to make them cardboard cutout villains ).

That said, Disney IS pursuing dollars and I’m sure is just softpedaling for the sake of the moola, as others have suggested.

And I really expect very little from a Bruckheimer film, anyway :frowning: . I’ll lay odds that it’s gonna suck.

  • Tamerlane
8

goboy, I would concur with the others here that it’s purely an economic move as regards portrayal of the Japanese. That said, what would you prefer? Shouldn’t the makers of the film be a bit careful about how they handle the issue? Shades of gray, man. It’s true that the Japanese were aggressive and expansionist, but it’s also true that the U.S. was whipped up into an unparalleled (for its history) racist furor in its efforts to ward off the yellow menace. Is it wise to repackage and sell that attitude? More to the point, that’s really not what the film seems to be about; the less import that part of the movie is given, the better.

9

Japan did not have to bomb pearl harbour, neither did they have to invade china.

Germany did not have to spark off world war 2 ( or 1 for that matter ! ).

America did not have to nuke japan.

They deserve all the hassle they get.

I wonder if the japanese will ever make a film about the american army killing all the native american indians.
mmmmmmmm
All countries has some bad history.

'people are the same everywhere ’ - Albert Einstein

10

Must admit I think that the fact that the Americans rounded up all the japanese into camps ( where were the american germans ? ) was a bit loony.

Having said all that, there was a kind of cover up over pearl harbour, it wasn’t that big a blow to the USA.

With the industrial might the USA had over Japan would it really have mattered if all the battleships had been sunk ?

You can always make more of them.

11

Well, if Hollywood was willing to change the identity of the killer in “Rising Sun” from a Japanese executive to a Caucasian, to avoid hurting Japanese feelings, is ANYONE surprised they’d try to make the Japanese out to be swell guys in “Pearl Harbor”?

Not that it matters- from everything I’ve heard, the movie stinks. It will do blockbuster business this weekend, and maybe next… but I suspect word-of-mouth will kill this turkey off FAST.

12

Well, I wonder how you feel in the US when your history suffers such relatively mild revisionism.

Remember how you feel about this whenever you come across a movie such as Titanic that prepetuates the myth that third class passengers were locked below decks just to give the film a better good/evil slant.

Don’t forget The Patriot too with its gross exagerration of British brutality in the name of whipping up a US feelgood factor.

Finally don’t forget that the ‘adventure’ using ‘artistic licence’ when the crew of a US destroyer recovers the codebreaking settings list from a German submarine, despite the fact it was a British destroyer and her crew that risked everything to make that last search of the sinking sub.

Welcome to revisionism folks, can’t find enough glory of your own ? Fine, then steal someone elses or simply make it up.

13

A long time ago I learned that if history comes out of Hollywood it is very likely fantasy while history coming out of Sheffield tends to be historical.

14

Um, actually, some of the gates in steerage WERE locked. It wasn’t deliberate-they just left the 3rd class passengers on their own as far as getting to the boat deck.

It wasn’t as bad as it was in the movie, but I THINK some dives have shone that some of the gates were still locked.

15

Ran across this one this week. First chance to post it.

Want to get everyones view point on this. But first, here’s mine.

I agree that the internment of the Japanese Americans wasn’t exactly right, but it had to be done. Just as the Supreme Court ruled on the matter, it had to be done for reasons of national security. We were in the middle of a war, we couldn’t risk having spies. And I’m sure some of them were spies, as were some Nazis that had snuck into the country also. But there wasn’t such a large population of Germans and they’d be hard to find in everyday life in America. Japanese people aren’t caucasian…which leads me to my next issue. Was the internment racialy motivated?

Doubt it, but hey, anythings possible.

But anyways, I’d like to hear everyones thoughts on this one.

16

And another thing about the movie debate that’s evolving here. People have the right to put what they wish to put into the movies they make. And you have the right to not go see it.

17

You do realize that Japanese Americans who were born and raised in the USA were interred right? I doubt very, very much that they were spying for a country they have never even visited. Some of them were 3rd for 4th generation citizens, who didn’t even know the language.
Of course the internment camps were racially motivated. Just because The Supreme Court ruled they were Constitutional doesn’t mean it was right.

18

Not a single Japanese-American was ever found to be spying for Japan. Not one.

The reality is that it didn’t have to be done. There was no rational or evidentiary basis for it. What you sre saying, in essence, is that American citizens should have been put into concentration camps because they were physically similar to the citizens of a nation the United States was at war with. Some of these people were third and fourth generation Americans.

The internment certainly WAS racially motivated; while a few Italian and German-Americans were interned, the effort wasn’t anywhere near what it was for Japanese-Americans.

19

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pepperlandgirl *
**
You do realize that Japanese Americans who were born and raised in the USA were interred right? [\b][\quote]
My point is that Japanese people could easily blend into a Japanese-American culture. Those were the people that were spying.

Lets take few things into consideration.
1)People that work at the CIA and State Department could and have in the past leaked information to various foreign diplomats without ever visiting their countries.

  1. You said some of them were 3rd or 4th generation citizens who didn’t even speak the language. I’d say that some of them were. But the majority of them more than likely came from Japan, such as 1st generation. Remember, Japan had an overpopulation problem. That’s why they went on a conquest. To seize land and ease the population problems. That and the fact that the government…wasn’t quite all there.

Just because a minority is put into an internment camp, doesn’t mean that it was racially motivated. In fact, the reason I said that it wasn’t was because the camps were very unorganized, lightly patroled, and the people within them, the Japanese-Americans, even set up their own “government”,if you will.

Also, I mentioned the Supreme Court not only to say that the situation was Constitutional, but mainly to prove that there was good reason in doing it. It wasn’t the Nazi Holocaust. They were mearly detained.

20

sorry bout that. It should look like this.

**

**

My point is that Japanese people could easily blend into a Japanese-American culture. Those were the people that were spying.

Lets take few things into consideration.
1)People that work at the CIA and State Department could and have in the past leaked information to various foreign diplomats without ever visiting their countries.

  1. You said some of them were 3rd or 4th generation citizens who didn’t even speak the language. I’d say that some of them were. But the majority of them more than likely came from Japan, such as 1st generation. Remember, Japan had an overpopulation problem. That’s why they went on a conquest. To seize land and ease the population problems. That and the fact that the government…wasn’t quite all there.

Just because a minority is put into an internment camp, doesn’t mean that it was racially motivated. In fact, the reason I said that it wasn’t was because the camps were very unorganized, lightly patroled, and the people within them, the Japanese-Americans, even set up their own “government”,if you will.

Also, I mentioned the Supreme Court not only to say that the situation was Constitutional, but mainly to prove that there was good reason in doing it. It wasn’t the Nazi Holocaust. They were mearly detained. **
[/QUOTE]