These kinds of ignorant utterances are what happens when a dilettante who (presumably) has read a few books is given a national lectern. No doubt, Hanks viewpoint is a combination of Hollywood PC America hatred and lightly skimmed revisionist works. The following provides some context:
Two days after the surrender, twenty truck-loads of flour, rolled oats, canned goods, and rice arrived at the Yokosuka municipal office as relief supplies for the local people. The next day eleven more trucks appeared with medical supplies, blankets, tea, and other goods. Mayor Umezu, completely overwhelmed by this unexpected generosity, expressed his deep appreciation. Simultaneously, American soldiers on patrol or sightseeing in trucks and jeeps circulated throughout the occupied areas. Amused by the Japanese children, they handed out chocolate bars, hard tack, chewing gum, and candy drops. [1]Thus began the most benevolent, enlightened and successful occupations and exercises in state building in history. One problem that Americans have is their focus on what people say and to ignore what people do. This is particularly true when what people say differs from their actions. John Dower in his article “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures: World War II in Asia,” documents the racist rhetoric directed at the Japanese utilized by both the American media and American combat soldiers. For example, he notes the American Marines who landed on Iwo Jima with “’Rodent Exterminator’” stenciled on their helmets,” and the extensive use of the hunting metaphor for battle by American soldiers. [2] Dower also notes that in the movies Bataan and Guadalcanal Diary, American soldiers and Marines refer to the enemy as “monkeys.” [3] Dower also documents Japanese racism in the article, but he oozes moral equivalence, particularly in the conclusion; both sides were racist and had much room to improve.
In his study of American and Japanese racism, Dower does not present a case on how these attitudes affected the behavior and military policies of the belligerents; nor does he provide the type of analysis that would be required to demonstrate whether these views were representative of the entire culture. Not far from Yokosuka the Ofuna prisoner of war camp had been liberated a few days before the relief trucks rolled into Mayor Umezu’s town. The commander of Task Force 30.6, Commodore Rodger W. Simspon, radioed Admiral William Halsey the following message on 30 August 1945:
There has never been a blacker hellhole than the POW hospital we are now evacuating one-half mile north of mooring. Approximately 500 have now (30 August) been processed to Benevolence [hospital ship] including fracture, open wounds, concussion, burns and in general the worst malnutrition imaginable. Bestial beatings were common especially at Ofuna, inquisitorial den of brutism. [4]
A comparison of the treatment of POWs by Japan and the United States illustrates not so much racial hostility as very different cultures and the value those cultures placed on human life. John Lynn notes this vast difference in his description of events at Marpi Point on Saipan where Japanese civilians were forced to commit suicide by Japanese soldiers. [5] The Japanese military leadership preferred that Japanese civilians die rather than surrender to American troops. On Okinawa and on the home islands the Japanese leadership had no compunction about integrating civilians into the military defense establishment. This and the fact that the Japanese military "encouraged" Okinawian civilians to commit suicide is still an emotional issue both there and in Japan. [6] Despite the fire bombings and the A-bomb attacks, one can make the case that the American enemy had a higher regard for the lives of Japanese civilians than the Japanese government.
As noted above, Dower mentions the example of Marines having racial graffiti on their helmets as an example of the racist motivations of American military personal. According to John Dower in the Battle of Iwo Jima the United States suffered approximately 6800 hundred killed and around 20000 wounded. The Japanese garrison of 22000 was almost completely wiped out. However, Dower takes exception with the contemporary journalist who headlined a story in reference to the Japanese fanatical zeal to die for the Emperor as “These Nips are Nuts.” Dower does not mention whether he thinks Japanese behavior was something other than “nuts.” [7] He deplores the harsh rhetoric of Americans and concludes that it was the cause of American total war strategy; Japanese death worship is written off as a cultural affectation that had no bearing on the American military response.
Even on the issue of how deeply rooted or representative was American racial hostility towards the Japanese is something Dower generally ignores. Not long after the war ended the same Hollywood that produced Bataan and Guadalcanal Diary, whose message of hating the enemy in time of total war Dower so deplores, was producing Go For Broke (1951, starring Van Johnson) and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, director John Sturges; starring Spencer Tracy). The interesting thing is not so much the racial animosity that occured in time of total war that the Japanese chose to fight with no quarter, but the speed with which the racial hostility dissipated. On this issue, Dower reminds me of a criticism that was leveled at the authors of the history standards of the Goals 2000 education initiative: “The authors seem surprised by all that was commonplace, and take for granted all that was rare.” [8]
One inmate of Ofuna was well known both during the war and after. Colonel Gregory Boyington in his autobiography, “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” described in detail his experiences as a POW from the time he was shot down over Rabaul on 3 January 1944. Boyington, whatever his other personal faults, never harbored any hatred, much less racial animosity towards the Japanese:
“Whenever people ask me today about the Japanese, I rather suppose I am expected to hate them, all of them, and largely because of what was done to us captives there in the camp of Ofuna.” [9]
Boyington notes that he owed his life to an older Japanese lady who treated him well and looked the other way when he pilfered and smuggled food.
Another veteran whose experiences and actions are not consistent with Dower’s thesis, and who therefore must be forgotten, is Jacob DeShazer. Cpl. DeShazer was the bombardier of the sixteenth and last B-25 to take off the USS Hornet on 18 April 1942. DeShazer and the rest of the aircraft’s crew bailed out over what they hoped was Chinese held territory. They were wrong. They were captured and two of the five crewmen, Lt. William Farrow and Sgt. Harold Spatz, were executed by the Japanese. Although he suffered greatly while a guest of the Emperor, Cpl. DeShazer experienced a religious conversion while a POW. After the war he received his degree at Seattle Pacific University and returned to Japan to pursue missionary work. As DeShazer stated long after the war and years living in Japan: “’My love for the Japanese people was deep and sincere,’ says DeShazer. ‘I know that it came from God.’ And it was mutual.” [10]
In the opening paragraph of his article, John Dower wrote: “The hypocrisy of fighting a war with a segregated army and navy under the banner of freedom, democracy, and justice never was frankly acknowledged and now is all but forgotten.” [11] To make such a statement in 1996 requires a special animus towards the United States. As with his concluding remarks in the opening paragraph, Dower attempts to draw a moral equivalence between American racist rhetoric and Japan’s murderous actions that were responsible not only for the war but also its ferocity.
1. Reports of General MacArthur: MacArthur in Japan: The Occupation: Military Phase, Volume I, Supplement. (Washington D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1994). 49
2. John Dower “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures” in The War in American Culture, Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 175, 173
3. Dower, 176
4. Reports of General MacArthur, 100; http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/japansur/js-6f2.htm; http://www.ussyorktown.com/yorktown/pow.htm
5. John Lynn. Battle: A History of Combat and Culture. (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004). 279-80
6. Justin McCurry, "Told to commit suicide, survivors now face elimination from history" BBC. 6 July 2007. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schoolsworldwide/story/0,,2120220,00.html
7. John Dower, “Lessons from Iwo Jima,” in Perspectives (September, 2007) http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0709/0709med2.cfm
8. Walter A. McDougall “Whose History? Whose Standard?” Commentary (May, 1995) 41
9. Gregory Boyington. Baa Baa Black Sheep. (New York: Bantam Books, 1977) 270-1
10. Clint Kelly “Flight Into Eternity,” Response Vol. 26, No. 6 (Spring 2004) http://www.spu.edu/depts/uc/response/spring2k4/eternity.html
Also, http://www.doolittleraider.com/raiders/deshazer.htm
11. Dower, 169
Crossposted at The Dougout
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