Tom Hanks’ remarks about racism in the Pacific War anger American nationalists

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    I didn’t want to make a post about this story, but the fact that I keep seeing news headlines about it makes me feel it is something worth posting for discussion here:


    Tom Hanks, executive producer of HBO’s new miniseries about American Marines in the Pacific War, is being attacked for the following remark he made in a recent interview:

    “Back in World War II,” he says, “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?” – Tom Hanks

    Those who have read a bit of academic history books about the Pacific War probably won’t see anything particularly terrible or inaccurate about Hank’s view on racism in the war. It is, after all, just a simple version of the argument John Dower (MIT professor and advisor to the miniseries) made in his famous book, War Without Mercy. Historian Niall Ferguson had a similar message in The War of the World (viewable as a documentary here). To say that the brutality of 20th century warfare has been fueled by racism is hardly controversial.

    However, conservatives in America have exploded with anger of Hanks’ statements. Blog posts, editorials, and TV appearances on Fox News have taken Hanks’ remarks and twisted them into ridiculous exaggerations like “TOM HANKS SAYS RACISM WAS THE ONLY REASON FOR THE WAR” , “TOM HANKS THINKS AMERICA IS RACIST” , and of course – “LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD HATES AMERICA.”

    Here are a couple examples in video form:




    From the perspective of certain nationalistic conservatives, it would seem that pointing out that racism against the Japanese existed in the war is the equivalent of saying that the entire war only occurred because Americans were racist.

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    To close this post, here’s a photo from a 1943 issue of Life Magazine [featured in Dower's War Without Mercy]:

    It shows the skull of a Japanese soldier that an American marine fighting in the Pacific sent back to his girlfriend as a souvenir. In his book, Dower notes the practice of collecting bones or body parts of dead Japanese soldiers – something that did not happen in the war against Germany – as an example of how Americans viewed their Japanese foes as less than human. The practice was so widespread that it became routine for customs checkpoints to ask Americans returning from the Pacific if they were carrying any human bones in their luggage.

    Edit: Further reading on the collecting of “Jap skulls” can be found here. [Hat tip to Ponta]

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