Burt Folsom: Race and Pearl Harbor
[Burt Folsom is a professor of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan.]
Race is a delicate issue in American politics, and the misuse of history to promote racial intolerance should always be challenged. Tom Hanks is an excellent actor but is sadly ignorant of Japanese-American relations. In promoting a new miniseries on the Pacific front in World War II, Hanks said the Japanese “were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.” There are several major errors here.
Most important, the major issue with the Japanese was not race. In fact, the United States, under Commodore Perry in 1853, established cordial relations with Japan and opened that country to Western ideas. Our countries worked well together for years–President Theodore Roosevelt helped settle the Russo-Japanese War, and after World War I, the U. S. worked carefully and thoughtfully with our Japanese allies to regulate and reduce the number of warships in circulation. From 1911 until the beginning of World War II, the United States and Japan shared a trade agreement for a mutually beneficial commerce.
Our historical relationship with Japan was friendly until the 1930s, when Japan invaded China. Beginning in 1937, Japanese soldiers killed civilians, destroyed property and virtually enslaved millions of Chinese, culminating in Japan’s “New Order.” (The “order” meaning that Japan was on top, and all other people groups in the Pacific would be subordinate to them.)
The U. S. objected to that, and to growing Japanese imperialism in other areas of the Far East. In 1940 and 1941 we began to refuse to export steel and oil to Japan because we opposed Japanese aggression. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed our fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, before issuing any declaration of war. As Japanese troops swept through the Far East, they continued their inhuman practices of mass killings of civilians in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore, to name only a few areas. Hundreds of thousands of POWs died at their hands as well.
We Americans should not be ashamed of our reaction to Japanese imperialism. And if Japan were in the Far East committing those war crimes today, all of Hollywood would rise up to protest. Yes, by 1941, they did want to kill us, but not “because our way of living was different” unless Mr. Hanks means that our peaceful way of living was different from their military aggression. Japan wanted an empire across all of the Pacific, and the United States and its allies stood in the way. We fought them not because “we wanted to annihilate them” but because they bombed us at Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,400 of our military personnel, and threatened to establish a murderous regime over hundreds of millions of people.
Read entire article at burtfolsom.com
Race is a delicate issue in American politics, and the misuse of history to promote racial intolerance should always be challenged. Tom Hanks is an excellent actor but is sadly ignorant of Japanese-American relations. In promoting a new miniseries on the Pacific front in World War II, Hanks said the Japanese “were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.” There are several major errors here.
Most important, the major issue with the Japanese was not race. In fact, the United States, under Commodore Perry in 1853, established cordial relations with Japan and opened that country to Western ideas. Our countries worked well together for years–President Theodore Roosevelt helped settle the Russo-Japanese War, and after World War I, the U. S. worked carefully and thoughtfully with our Japanese allies to regulate and reduce the number of warships in circulation. From 1911 until the beginning of World War II, the United States and Japan shared a trade agreement for a mutually beneficial commerce.
Our historical relationship with Japan was friendly until the 1930s, when Japan invaded China. Beginning in 1937, Japanese soldiers killed civilians, destroyed property and virtually enslaved millions of Chinese, culminating in Japan’s “New Order.” (The “order” meaning that Japan was on top, and all other people groups in the Pacific would be subordinate to them.)
The U. S. objected to that, and to growing Japanese imperialism in other areas of the Far East. In 1940 and 1941 we began to refuse to export steel and oil to Japan because we opposed Japanese aggression. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed our fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, before issuing any declaration of war. As Japanese troops swept through the Far East, they continued their inhuman practices of mass killings of civilians in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore, to name only a few areas. Hundreds of thousands of POWs died at their hands as well.
We Americans should not be ashamed of our reaction to Japanese imperialism. And if Japan were in the Far East committing those war crimes today, all of Hollywood would rise up to protest. Yes, by 1941, they did want to kill us, but not “because our way of living was different” unless Mr. Hanks means that our peaceful way of living was different from their military aggression. Japan wanted an empire across all of the Pacific, and the United States and its allies stood in the way. We fought them not because “we wanted to annihilate them” but because they bombed us at Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,400 of our military personnel, and threatened to establish a murderous regime over hundreds of millions of people.