Tom Hanks Angers Conservatives, Comparing 'The Pacific' in World War II to Iraq

[bemildred]

Source: ABC News

---

The star of such flag-waving films as "Saving Private Ryan" and "Apollo 13" and producer of the World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers" has come under fire recently for remarks he made while promoting his current project, "The Pacific."

In an interview with Time magazine, Hanks, who is producing the HBO miniseries, compared the World War II conflict in the Pacific with the current one in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The Pacific" began airing March 14.

"Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods," Hanks told Time. "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?"

---

"What he is suggesting, that the coalition forces are acting out of racist motives, is preposterous," Pearle said. "We're there at the request of the Iraqi government, which is trying to put together a democracy, and we've lost Americans trying to help them do that. I'm not at all clear what Mr. Hanks has in mind.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/tom-hanks-latest-target-conservatives/story?id=10118876

---

:popcorn::popcorn:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Pearle: "We're there at the request of the Iraqi government" Really?

On edit: Pearle's yet another one of the Bush folks who I can't help wondering why they're not in jail.

[prairierose]

5. It just jumps out at you doesn't it.? You'd think after all these years...

that I would be more used to their lies but they still catch me by surprise because they keep telling the same lies even after they have been proven false. I keep wondering if they are that stupid or that arrogant. I can not decide which it might be.

[AlbertCat]

39. I can not decide which it might be.

Arrogance and stupidity are not mutually exclusive.

[No Elephants]

22. The government we installed after we invaded wants our dollars to help pay for what we broke.

And we won't be providing any help unless they ask us to stay as long as we tell them to ask us.


Did anyone notice if he he had his fingers crossed? If so, it's not really a lie.

[WileEcoyote]

27. Maybe it has to do with the provocative way the Iraqis dress

It's like they were asking for an invasion...

[No Elephants]

42. Bingo.

Their eyelashes are clearly visible in most photos.

[bc3000]

34. And if they change their minds we'll install a new government to request us

[LiberalFighter]

59. So Saddam requested the Bush government to invade and cut off his head.

Perle should be locked up in Iraq.

[yurbud]

73. Saddam Hussein said, ''Take my country, PLEASE!'' and hang me like a Thanksgiving turkey while

you're at it...

[progressoid]

96. Yeah, I remember that. He was asking for it!

Fuck Pearle.

[joeybee12]

2. The truth hurts, doesn't it Mr. Pearle...n/t

[Robb]

Well, if rich white guys can't tell us when we're being racist,

...who can?

[mbperrin]

3. Okay, Perle, Saddam Hussein requested that the US invade Iraq?

That's your statement, because you said that we're there at the request of the Iraqi government, and that's who was in charge of the Iraqi government when we invaded, um, went in at their request.

Or is Richard Perle a lying, cheating, neocon, scumbag who lined his pockets and those of others killing anyone handy in order to build corporate profits?


Yes, Alex, I'll take Perle, the lying scumbag for all I can get.....

[OnlinePoker]

4. There's a big difference between WWII Japan and Iraq.

Iraq never attacked the U.S. Japan started the war at Pearl Harbor and the only thing America could do was finish it without remorse.

[whathehell]

8. Exactly.......With all due respect to Tom Hanks, this seems a rather stupid comparison.

Earth to Hanks: The Japanese attacked us. Period.

He might recall that we fought blond, blue-eyed Germans as well.

[Lasher]

11. And other big differences too.

For example, rich people didn't get a tax holiday during WWII. There was rationing of everything including food. Pennies were made of steel because the copper was needed for the war effort. The two conflicts were nothing alike.

[NewJeffCT]

12. True - about the only thing that was similar

was demonizing the others, which happens in most every war by each side. And, nearly everybody says that they have God on their side as well (or Allah or Apollo or whoever)

[Lasher]

41. That's right Jeff, war is a terrible thing.

Peace Brother, it's still a good idea.

:hippie:

Peace and love.

[dbmk]

21. Would have to agree on that.

The comparison is indeed rather stupid. There was a reason to fighting the Japanese apart from them being different. Or it fitting into a grand neoconservative dream of world domination.

It might have relevance in terms of discussing the soldiers experience, which is likely the focus of the series, and probably was what lead him to the comment.

But as general cause and reason for the fighting - which was how it came across - it fails miserably.

[47of74]

25. Probably wasn't the best analogy to make

Hanks might also want to recall the war crimes committed by the Japanese against anyone who wasn't Japanese.

Bataan Death March
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March

Sandakan Death Marches
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandakan_Death_Marches

[No Elephants]

37. Hanks did not make a war analogy. Pearle only said Hanks did. Please see Reply #28.

[mbperrin]

26. Well, there does seem to be a difference in the treatment of Germans

and Japanese here:

http://www.rotten.com/library/imagery/propaganda/racist-propaganda/

And there was that internment-camp-thing of US born citizens of Japanese heritage; never actually restored any of the seized property, but did mumber "sorry" in 1988.

Yeah, there seems to be a bit extra about the Japanese.

[whathehell]

75. Yeah...but we're talking about the CAUSE of the war..

Racist attitudes may have accompanied it...But they were hardly the "cause" of it.


The Japanese Internment was a sorry thing..Certainly those people should have had their property returned and I wouldn't be at all opposed to reimbursing their children or grandchildren, if that, in fact, hasn't already happened.

Having said that, we should remember that WW II occurred almost seventy years ago...When it came to matters of race and ethnicity, the US, along with most of the world (and that would definitely include Japan) were behind the curve.

So yes, we made mistakes...but they were not more egregious (and possibly less)than the other world powers of the time.

[No Elephants]

28. Did we intern Americans of German or Italian descent? Hanks is not saying

Iraq is more or less culpable than Japan was, or that the two "wars" are the same. He is talking about our attitudes, not toward the Japanese or Iraqis whom we actually faced in combat, but toward the group as a whole. Hanks also said nothing about the reasons we went to war. That was Pearle's spin, to fit his own anti-liberal agenda. Don't blame Hanks for Pearle's spin.

BTW, I'm guessing that Hanks knows quite a bit about WWII, given his intelligence, the films he's made AND, more importantly, the work he and Spielberg did to get a WWII memorial.

[OnlinePoker]

30. Yes

11500 Germans and at least 1500 Italians.

[No Elephants]

35. Percentage wise, those numbers tend to support Hanks' point.

Internment was my question, not Hanks'. However, the percentage of Italian Americans interned is practically nothing, compared with the perccentage of Japanese Americans interned.

And people of German descented accounted for a very large percentage of all Americans at that time, yet only about a third of WWII internments. And, there was at least a semblance of "cause," though a loose one. Almost all of the other internments were of Japanese descent, even without any reason, besides heritage, to suspect them.

On edit: ALLJapanesee Americans residing on the West Coast of the U.S. were interned, over 110,000 from there alone. Others from Hawaii and other parts of the U.S. were also interned, but in smaller percentages.

[OnlinePoker]

43. Don't forget

The majority of German and Italians arrested were male adults where the Japanese had whole families rounded up including children and infants. This happened in Canada as well.

[WriteDown]

52. The only thing that prevented internment of Italian and German Americans was....

that they were much more difficult to pick out. If they had had yellow eyes or something, the percentages would have been the same.

[mbperrin]

55. Oh, my relatives wouldn't have been that hard to pick out. Names like

Weissang, Zuber, Albrecht, von Schriltz. Not exactly Brit in origin. Yet all these farmers were left in peace. Hmmmm.

[WriteDown]

57. And if you just had a grandfather who gave you the name?

Much easier to round up the yellow people with the distinct facial features.

[mbperrin]

60. Sure is!

Now, of course, "Asian" students are held in such esteem in school that many of my Mexican heritage students are "passing" as Asian. I'm getting old, but I didn't see this one coming.

[WriteDown]

61. I've passed for both Asian, Hispanic, even half Black.

No one ever gets it right.

[mbperrin]

64. I can't pass for anything but a pale, blue-eyed, balding, heavy

person of obvious western European descent.

Dammit! These days, that ain't cool.

(Wait! Was balding and too heavy EVER cool?) Never mind......;)

[WriteDown]

86. You need to add more to that description....

You sound vaguely like Karl Rove. :)

I can't break 180lb. Surprising considering that obesity runs rampant in my ancestry. Good and bad things in there though.

[LanternWaste]

68. Other than selective internment and exclusionary laws

Other than selective internment and exclusionary laws, the German-American population in the U.S. was largely ignored by the American government.

There were app. 300,000 German-born aliens that were required to register with the Alien Registration Division and the FBI during the wa-- and only a small percentage of that was ever interred-- regardless of length of time (some were interred for as little as six weeks in the '42-'43 period), only enough to fill four smaller internment camps were ever arrested-- a very small percentage of the German-American population (the second largest immigrant population in the U.S. at the time) as a whole.

Indeed, many known members of the American Bund (the Hitler sympathizing quasi-political organizations) were largely left alone other than routine surveillance (as per "Roosevelt's Secret War, by Joseph Persico), a far cry from entire neighborhoods of Japanese Americans disappearing in the span of little more than a week.

And this is taking into account *only* those who were identified as German-Americans, or as you wrote "easier to pick out", yet the disparity of numbers between interred known Japanese Americans versus interred known German-Americans is still to such a degree as to be absolute.

[WriteDown]

51. Yes, actually we did....

Wasn't as easy though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_internment

[mbperrin]

56. Here's a couple of posters from WWII:

As you can see, the Germans wanted to destroy the Bible, but those Japs wanted our WIMMEN!

[proteus_lives]

90. I love WWII propaganda.

It's really an art-form.

[47of74]

95. The one with the bible reminded me of an Italian propaganda poster

This poster - which dated from WW II - showed the inside of a church being desecrated by an African-American soldier. I looked but couldn't find an image of the poster off hand, and I'm too tired to look right now.

[RaleighNCDUer]

66. OTOH, the war against Japan was significantly different from the

war against Germany.

We would have NEVER dropped the bomb on Berlin. Sure, we would raze it to the ground with massed incendiary attacks, but not the Bomb.

When we fought Germany, we were fighting people who look like us. They were krauts and Nazis; they were not yellow monkeys and slant-eyed devils. Kraut is maybe equal to Jap - what term for the Germans can you think of that was equivalent to yellow monkeys and slant-eyed devils?

They were different wars.

[ieoeja]

69. Of course, we would have dropped the bomb on Berlin.

They did not know anything about radioactive poison at the time. To the people making that decision, the atomic bomb was no different than any other bomb. It just made a much bigger explosion.

[spoony]

78. Quite so.

Well put.

[LanternWaste]

17. Many differences, yes. However many valid comparisons too...

I think many historical occurrences may be both contrasted and compared to a more contemporary scenario if we read context as well as occurrence. Relevant and valid analogies and comparisons between both conflicts may be found as well as dramatic contrasts.

Within context, I do not think that Hanks was attempting to draw a parallel between the origins of each conflict, rather I think his observation is targeted at the fundamental surge of racism that both conflicts appear to share.

ed: sp

[No Elephants]

45. Exactly. Some seem to be reacting to what Pearle claimed Hanks meant, not to what

Hanks actually said.

The Big Lie strategy of Atwater/Rove, still quite effective after all these years.

[kgnu_fan]

32. Excerpt from Howard Zinn's "Three Holy Wars"

And I’ll bet you 90 percent of the American people do not know about the raid of Tokyo. Everybody has heard about Hiroshima. I’ll bet 90 percent of the American people—I don’t you know if you have—know that several months before Hiroshima, we sent planes over Tokyo to set Tokyo afire with firebombs, and 100,000 people died in one night of bombing in Tokyo. Altogether we killed over half a million people in Japan, civilians. And some people said, “Well, they bombed Pearl Harbor.” That’s really something. These people did not bomb Pearl Harbor. Those children did not bomb Pearl Harbor. But this notion of violent revenge and retaliation is something we’ve got to get rid of.

So I began, yeah, reconsidering all of that, rethinking all of that, investigated the bombing of Hiroshima, investigated the excuse that was made—“Oh, you know, if we don’t bomb Hiroshima, well, we have to invade Japan, and a million people will die.” And I investigated all of that, found it was all nonsense. We didn’t have to invade Japan in order for Japan to surrender. Our own official investigative team, the Strategic Bombing Survey, which went into Japan right after the war, interviewed all the high Japanese military, civilian officials, and their conclusion was Japan was ready to end the war. Maybe not the next week, maybe in two months, maybe in three months. “Oh, no, we can’t wait. We don’t want to wait. We’ve got these bombs. We’ve got to see what they look like.” Do you know how many people die because of experimentation with weapons? We were experimenting. We were experimenting on the children of Hiroshima. “Let’s see what this does. Hey, and also, let’s show the Russians. Let’s show the Russians we have this bomb.” A British Scientist who was an adviser to Churchill called the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima “the first step of the Cold War.” Soviet Union was in the mind of the people around Harry Truman—James Burns, Forrestal and others.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars

[Xithras]

63. Hardly

"Japan started the war at Pearl Harbor "

You mean: "Japan attacked a military base belonging to an imperialist foreign nation that had illegally toppled the island nations legitimate and legal government, enslaved its populace, and was committing gross human rights violations in that nation every day?"

Most Americans don't realize that the Japanese government sold WW2 to its people using the same justifications we did. They told their people that their sons and daughters were "freeing their Asian brothers" from the bondage and oppression of the foreign European colonialists and armies. They were fighting for "freedom" and used their "moral high ground" to self-justify all sorts of atrocities.

Sound familiar?

[RaleighNCDUer]

70. Yep. They invaded Indochina to free it from the French, not to seize

the rubber plantations for themselves. They were driving the European imperialists from China, not making one of the greatest land grabs in history.

Same script, different actors.

[Thothmes]

80. Howmany of the European imperialists

did they have bayonet practice on in Nanking?

[pundaint]

6. Gee I'm pissed, We are fighting wars and killing civilians in four countries this year, with no

declaration of war, all because for the criminal acts of a few dozen Saudi's and the blood lust of a pack of draft dodgers. And Tom Hanks seeks to legitimize it by comparing it to WWII? Maybe he was just comparing propaganda machines for the way they use the worst of humanity to help subjugate us all. Clearly he wan't comparing the treatment of war criminals, it's different when they're us.

[No Elephants]

46. Hanks did not do that. Pearle did. Hanks was comparing social attitudes,

not wars, or causes of wars.

Point is, we demonize those we perceive to be our enemies. How we came up with that perception is a separate issue.

And he is correct. Names are created to de-humanize and de-individualize: Heimies, Wops, Japs, Gooks, Charlie, Towelhead. That's how we team build-- and make it bearable to kill. If you thought of the targets as decent, scared people like you, with sisters, wives, sweethearts, sons and daughters, it would be so much harder to shoot reflexively.

And, then, there's Jody. But, that's another story.

[fishwax]

83. how do you get that Hanks seeks to legitimize the Iraq war?

I don't see that as his point at all ...

[Botany]

7. Gee Pearle isn't this your name at the bottom of the letter asking for the ....

..... war in Iraq?

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

You can't change history or facts, Pearle.

[secondwind]

13. Is it the same guy? The spelling of the last name is different. Just sayin'..I hope you're right

[oberliner]

16. I think it's a typo - Pearle = Perle nt

[MrsBrady]

9. I don't think I agree with Hank's or Pearle's assessment n/t

[Roland99]

10. Richard Perle is a Grade-A batshit-insane neocon fuckwad.

and that's being nice.

[Gen. Jack D. Ripper]

14. Hanks points out the painfully obvious

and they act like they're outraged. Who do they think they're fooling?

[Butch350]

15. Iraq Govn't invited the US to down Sadam?

Huh i'm confused.

[Demeter]

18. It Was Some OTHER Iraqi government

Like the Corporate Elite (aka Big Oil).

[AlbertCat]

44. Huh i'm confused.

Pearle's work is done......

[AzNick]

19. Nail on the head nt

[ixion]

20. Iraq doesn't compare to ANY facet of WWII

It's an entirely different ball game. Mr. Hanks can peddle his fascism somewhere else.

[dbmk]

24. I think you interpret his comment the opposite way of where he was going with it. n/t

[h9socialist]

23. My question for Richard Pearle is:

How can we be in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government when the Iraqi government didn't exist until we went in and imposed it?

[erpowers]

29. Veterans Should be Upset Not Conservatives

I think to compare the Pacific action with the Iraq War is an insult to the veterans of World War II. This country may have had it issues back then, but the country was fighting in the Pacific because America had been attacked on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. In Iraq President Bush and his friends launched an attack on a country that did not attack this country. It is the veterans who risked their lives in the Pacific who should be angry at Tom Hanks; not the Republicans like Richard Perle who promoted the Iraq War.

I am not trying to insult the military veterans who fought in Iraq. My point is that the soldiers in the Pacific during World War II were there because this country had been attacked by the Japanese. President Bush sent American soldiers to Iraq for other reasons. I do not think it was racism, but other reasons.

[No Elephants]

47. Hank never said racism was the reason for either war. Please see Reply 28.

[erpowers]

74. Better choice of Words

Tom Hanks should have used a better choice of words.

[kgnu_fan]

31. Three Holy Wars - Howard Zinn

The Revolutionary War
The Civil War
World War II

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars

Howard Zinn: Myths of the Good Wars (Three 'Holy' Wars)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-d23ma3qz8

Howard Zinn's "Three Holy Wars"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUBYI97cUgU

[proteus_lives]

91. Zinn's "cut-your-throat" pacifism doesn't impress me anymore then imperialism does.

[madrchsod]

33. tom is an idiot if he thinks there is a valid comparison.

he`s insulting a lot of good men and women who died and those who still carry the scars of battle.

best he read about the rape of nanking before he spouts off again.....

[No Elephants]

40. Please see Reply 28. There is a difference between what Hanks said and how Pearle spun it.

[OllieLotte]

48. A very talented idiot. and an excellent directer. But yep...on this

topic...he's a dumb-ass.

[Hippo_Tron]

77. It's a fact that we used incredibly racist propaganda to portray the Japanese during World War II

It's also a fact that in spite of this, we had good reasons for fighting the Japanese during World War II whereas the same cannot be said for Iraq. Hanks might have done well to point that out as well.

[madrchsod]

79. that`s for sure....especially the cartoons, they were brutal...

[elocs]

36. Pretty much the same reason why this country tried to exterminate Native Americans. n/t

[AlbertCat]

38. I'm not at all clear what Mr. Hanks has in mind.

Uh.... then why are you commenting on it? Get back to us when you've figured it out. :eyes:

[robcon]

49. Hanks is a moron.

It was the Japanese, not Americans, who made this (and the Chinese War in the 1930's) as a race war.

[LanternWaste]

50. all sides contributed to it...

I don't think Hanks' point was who initially engaged racism as a tool of the conflict, but that all sides contributed to it...









(from an issue of Life Magazine)

[EFerrari]

54. The Japanese rounded themselves up in California?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

58. They're a very sneaky people.

:crazy:

[Thothmes]

81. No, President Roosevelt did that.

[newtothegame]

53. Hanks IS way off base here.

"We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different"

Totally untrue. We were fighting the Japanese because they had basically divided up the world with Germany and we were the last hope to stop them. The Japanese were our enemy because THEY were the agressor in the world; any other country that did the same would have been our enemy too.

[LiberalFighter]

62. Cripes!!! ABC has poor research. They misspelled Perle's name with an a.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

67. And I copied it with the 'a' into post #1. I should have just said "Prince of Darkness." nt

[LiberalFighter]

76. How difficult can it be for the reporter to get the name right?

Maybe they are outsourcing their news.

[Svafa]

65. Why is everyone having such a hard time with this?

Probably because Pearle is an asshole attempting to totally obscure Hanks' actual point. Hanks wasn't attempting to justify the war on Iraq by comparing it to WWII; he wasn't saying the wars began similarly or were conducted similarly. All he was saying is that racist rhetoric and propaganda played a large role in both wars. The fact that so many progressives on this board were left confused is a testament to the slanted neocon writing of Pearle.

[lunatica]

71. Pearle just misses the point altogether

OK, I finally got it. They hear what they want to hear no matter what's said. Period.

Or, on the other hand they're like this stupid man...

[tomg]

72. I just finished reading the

Times interview. Pearle is obviously one of two things:a bloody illiterate or a disingenuous liar. From the context, Hanks is asking/pondering how people can be sent off to war where they have spent years fighting an enemy they have been taught is less than human and then these same men and women are expected to integrate back into society seamlessly. He spends quite a bit of time discussing the obligations we owe to them and the pressures they undergo/underwent in reintegrating into society.

I notice that the ABC news leaves out the sentence that comes directly before his quote: "How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us?"

If anything, his appreciation for the men and women, both then and now, is so clear. I think
I will go with disingenuous liar.

[deaniac21]

82. The carnage doesn't compare to WWII.

[butterfly77]

84. These motherfuckers really love war..

They act as though the only people who fight in them are caucasians or repugs..

[Political Heretic]

85. BREAKING NEWS: RICH WHITE GUY SETS RECORD STRAIGHT ON RACISM

Developing....

[citizen snips]

87. Hanks should learn about the Japanese crimes against humanity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

[proteus_lives]

92. Everyone should.

Japan's done a lot of work to much sure they're forgotten.

[Solly Mack]

88. "We're there at the request of the Iraqi government" LMAO

Damn

[Swamp Rat]

93. That reads like an Onion headline

:dunce:

[Solly Mack]

94. Very disturbing picture, Swamp.

The creme in my coffee curdled....and I like coffee..a lot.

lol

[walldude]

97. They will tell themselves anything...

unbelievable!

[proteus_lives]

89. Hanks means well but he's off-base.

Iraq/WOT isn't comparable to WWII.