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Thursday, March 11, 2010
U.S. Marines killed in WW2, 24,486. Sixty-four years later, Tom Hanks stabs them in the back.
Somebody may ask. How can a guy like Tom Hanks, who has Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers on his resume, suddenly and inexplicably decide the fight against the Japanese was based on propaganda and racism? Surprisingly to most people, Hanks has been going on TV lately making a moral equivalency case, saying that Americans and Japanese soldiers hated each other because each was different from the other (then he tries to link it to our distaste for Muslim extremists not only who launched a sneak attack on us, but who continue to want to attack innocent civilians; who want to kill us). Well, I think it’s time somebody put Hanks in his rightful place. The truth is, Hanks I’m convinced, is a fraud. I think that, when it comes to despising the U.S. military, he’s in bed with Barack Obama. Finally, Hanks, I believe, is admitting his Hollywood hatred for America and everything it stands for because he just can’t hold it in any longer. And I guess he feels that he’s rich enough that he no longer has to.
The background.
Seems to lil’ ol’ blond haired, blue eyed Rachel that, when it comes to American-hating guys like Hanks, love of money has always come way before hatred of country. But eventually the true colors show through.
Fact is, I believe Tom, somewhat ironically, despises most everything our country and military stand for. If somebody was going to make a killing off of WW2, he’d want it to be him. I believe that Hanks believed in his pre-Saving Private Ryan days that he could make a pile of money making war movies, while embedding within them the almost subliminal notion that the GI’s were no better than the Japanese or Germans. How many of us have actually bought into that lie? Did U.S. Marines in WWII commit equivalent acts of barbarism that the Japanese soldiers specialized in? You decide.
Here’s a sample of what the Japanese busied themselves with during the war years. Or, Tommy, is it just some Rachel concocted propaganda?
How about The Rape of Nanking for starters? The Bataan Death March. The Japanese practice of lopping off heads of prisoners of war. The barbaric, inhumane medical experimentation on American soldiers in 1945 Japan. Perhaps a little more atrocity history is necessary to put this moral equivalency lie to rest. My thanks to George Dunkan for the language and information that I have a feeling Hanks won’t be making any movies about. For Hanks to say that our greatest generation was no better than the enemies they fought, enemies who wanted to enslave the world cerca 1940, is unforgivable. I believe that Eddie Slovic had a thousand times the courage and love of country as a Tom Hanks. Who’s good at pretending. He’s an actor. In real life, I believe he’s nothing but a liar. Now let’s take a look at the kind of soldiers Tom Hanks compares the United States citizen soldier to.
This is a sample of what the Japanese were responsible for leading up to and during the second world war. “Known historically as the ‘Rape of Nanking, in 1937, (the real start of World War II) the Chinese capital had a population of just over one million, including over 100,000 refugees. On December 13, the city fell to the invading Japanese troops. For the next six weeks the soldiers indulged in an orgy of indiscriminate killing, rape and looting. They shot at everyone on sight, whether out on the streets or peeking out of windows. The streets were soon littered with corpses, on one street a survivor counted 500 bodies. Girls as young as twelve, and women of all ages were raped by gangs of 15 or 20 soldiers, crazed by alcohol, who roamed the town in search of women. At the Jingling Women’s University, students were carted away in trucks to work in Japanese army brothels. Over a thousand men were rounded up and marched to the banks of the Yangtze river where they were lined up and gunned to death to give practice in machine-gun traversing fire. Thousands of captured Chinese soldiers, many wounded, were also murdered. In the following six weeks, the Nanking Red Cross units alone, buried around 43,000 bodies. About 20,000 women and girls had been raped, most were then murdered. Department stores, shops, churches and houses were set on fire while drunken soldiers indulged in wholesale looting and bayoneting of Chinese civilians for sport. It is estimated that over 150,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were killed in this, the most infamous atrocity committed by the Japanese army.
PHILIPPINES MASSACRE
“A full account of all massacres of Filipinos by Japanese troops would fill several books. In Manila, 800 men, women and children were machine-gunned in the grounds of St. Paul’s College. In the town of Calamba, 2,500 were shot or bayoneted. Around 100 were bayoneted and shot inside a church at Ponson and 169 villagers of Matina Pangi were rounded up and shot in cold blood. At the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, document No 2726 consisted of 14,618 pages of sworn affidavits, each describing separate atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. The Tribunal listed 72 large scale massacres and 131,028 murders as a bare minimum.
THE CHEKIANG MASSACRES
“The Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo brought a retaliation against the Chinese people that staggers the imagination. On April 18, 1942, sixteen twin-engined Mitchell B-25 bombers, each carrying one ton of bombs, and led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. Their mission was to bomb the Japanese capital, Tokyo, and then, unable to land back on their carrier, proceed to friendly airfields in China, 1,200 miles across the East China Sea. Some of the planes reached their destination safely but the others ran out of fuel and crashed after their crews had baled out. Sixty four airmen parachuted into the area around Chekiang. Most were given shelter by the Chinese civilians but eight of the Americans were picked up by Japanese patrols and three were shot after a mock trial for ‘crimes against humanity’. The Japanese army then conducted a massive search for the others and in the process whole towns and villages that were suspected of harboring the Americans were burned to the ground and every man, woman and child brutality murdered. When the Japanese troops moved out of the Chekiang and Kiangsu areas in mid-August, they left behind a scene of devastation and death that is beyond comprehension. Chinese estimates put the death toll at a staggering 250,000. Lt. Col. James Doolittle was later awarded the US Medal Of Honor. (The Chinese Department of Defense claims that 1,319,659 Chinese soldiers were killed between 1937 and 1945. It estimates the number of Chinese civilians killed during this period at over 30,000,000)
ATROCITY ON LUZON
“While many atrocities were committed on Luzon, this one stands out for its sheer bloody mindedness. Fourteen Filipino resistance fighters surrendered to the Nippon savages after their ammunition was expended. Tied together neck to neck and with hands tied behind their backs, they were marched three miles to their place of execution. Ordered to sit down, another group of prisoners were brought in and forced to dig fourteen holes two feet wide and four and a half feet deep. When the digging finished the fourteen Filipinos, with their neck ropes removed, were forced to jump into the holes while the other group shoveled the earth back into the hole and stamped it down hard until only the head and neck of the victims were visible above ground. Their repugnant duty finished, the grave diggers were then lined up and shot in cold blood. The attention of the Japanese was now focused on the fourteen heads awaiting decapitation. A few soldiers had gone behind some bushes to defecate and after scraping together their excreta on to banana leaves they returned to the buried victims and kneeling down offered each head a last meal. Unable to move, the helpless men could only shake their head from side to side whereupon the Japanese soldiers stuffed the revolting faeces into their mouths amidst peals of laughter from their comrades. After they had their fun, the serious business of execution commenced as an officer drew his sword and with deft strokes separated the fourteen heads from the bodies. No one was ever punished for this foul deed.
MURDER ON WAKE ISLAND (January 12, 1943)
The stubborn defense of the island by the tiny garrison of 388 US Marines and 1,200 civilians workers lasted for fourteen heroic days. On December 23, 1941, Major James P.S. Devereux of the 1st. Defense Battalion, US Marine Corps, and Commander Winfield Cunningham of the Naval Air Station, realizing that the odds were hopelessly stacked against them, called for a cease fire, raised the white flag and surrendered the island. In January, 1942, the US Marines, numbering 1,187, were herded into the cargo holds of the 17,163 ton Japanese luxury liner Nitta Maru, for transportation to Yokohama and then to Shanghai. Those left behind included the civilians and the wounded Marines. A year passed and on the night of January 12, 1943, the Japanese accused the civilians of being in secret radio communication with US naval forces. The 97 American civilians still on Wake (actually 98 but one was caught stealing food and was beheaded) were marched to the beach and there lined up with their backs to the ocean and brutally murdered by machine guns. After the war, the Japanese commander on Wake, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara, and eleven of his officers, were sentenced to death by a US Naval Court at Kwajalein. Sakaibara was transported to Guam to await his fate. There, on 19 June 1947, he was executed by hanging. The murdered civilian POWs were later buried in Honolulu Memorial, Hawaii.
THE ‘AKIKAZE’ EXECUTIONS (March 18, 1943)
“The Mitsubishi built destroyer Akikaze (Lt. Cdr. Sabe Tsurukichi) was ordered to sail to Wewak in New Guinea to remove some German residents who were suspected of using radio transmitters to report ship movements to the Americans. Forty civilians were rounded up, most of them German clergymen, plus a few nuns with two children. About thirty more civilians were picked up when the ship stopped at Manus Island before proceeding to Rabaul. En-route, Captain Tsurukichi received a radio message from the 8th Fleet Headquarters to dispose of all neutrals on board. On the aft deck a wooden scaffold was erected and a sheet hung across the deck to shield the executions from the rest of the prisoners. One by one the victims were led from their cabins, interrogated and blindfolded and taken to the rear of the ship. There, they were hung on the scaffold by the wrists from a rope and pulley and as their feet cleared the deck they were shot by a four man rifle party. Their bodies were then thrown overboard. The two children were taken from the arms of the nuns and thrown into the water. The men were killed first then the women, the whole procedure lasting three hours.”
(George Duncan, Massacres and Atrocities of WWII)
BACK TO RACHEL
I know it’s a chore to read through all this, but just imagine what it was like trying to live through it.
Incidentally, Hank’s “Band of Brothers”, as I see it, was filled with ludicrous suggestions that there was also a moral equivalency between the German and American soldiers while anybody at Malmedy would disagree. As I remember, in virtually every Band of Brothers episode there was a gratuitous shot of an American soldier killing a white-flag-waving German soldier in cold blood. High ranking American officers were generally painted as cowardly, callous fools. Why didn’t at least the TV reviewers in the mainstream media pick up on this? Isn’t the answer so obvious? Because they agreed with it.
Hanks, last week, went on foaming at the mouth spewing, in Rachel’s opinion, contempt for American soldiers by implying the Marines in the Pacific were out to “kill them all”. Give me a break. The Japanese believed surrender would bring dishonor to themselves and their families. The Japanese respected no one who surrendered. For the most part, the Japanese hated taking prisoners and wouldn’t be taken prisoner. The United States soldier was 7 times more likely to die as a prisoner of the Japanese than of the Germans. When the Japanese weren’t engaging in bayonet practice with POW’s, you might find them playing games with Chinese babies, throwing them up in the air, and trying to impale them with their bayonets. What a way to pass the time. What a pitiful excuse for an American, in my humble opinion, Tom Hanks really is.
Comments
Mr Hanks is simply another in the long list of under educated and over paid illusionists who inhabit “tinsel town”. If you mentioned “Nanking Massacre” to most of them they would reply: “Is that a rock group?”
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ on 03/11/2010 at 02:33 PMvirtually every Band of Brothers episode there was a gratuitous shot of an American soldier killing a white-flag-waving German soldier in cold blood
Negative. There was only one scene in the episode “Day of Days” where it was IMPLIED that an American officer killed a group of German POWs. The officer in question, a real man named Donald Spears (then Lieutenant, but ended up retiring a Colonel, if memory serves), actually helped the film crew in the creation of that episode. It was done because of a rumor that said officer, had, in real life, actually done this thing that followed him throughout the European campaign. The officer actually helped to propagate the rumor in order to gain a reputation as a mean SOB among his men.
It is left undetermined whether he’d really killed the POWs or not, in both the movie (and also in real life – as far as I know, Colonel Spears has never clarified what actually happened on that day).
So, no, there were no scenes of surrendering Germans being killed in every episode. In Saving Private Ryan, there is the “Look, I washed for supper” scene where surrendering Germans are gunned down by American troopers, but it was also in the heat of the battle for Omaha Beach, and it isn’t portrayed in a way to denigrate the men involved, in my opinion, but more to portray the abject horrors of war.
Also in Saving Private Ryan is a scene where a German kills a surrendering American troop with a knife to the heart. Not sure that Tom Hanks’ movies, to date, anyway, are as bad as you are thinking.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 03:36 PMAs the “infrequent” commenter here, and for good reason, I’m not nearly as erudite as most of you Folkes are, I do have a couple of thoughts on this one…....
First, my Dad fought on Peleliu, a place that he described as truly Hell on Earth. 3 Purle Hearts, 2 Bronze and 1 Silver Star.
I truly am looking forward to this movie, possibly more than the Eastwood films on the subject.
I hadn’t heard any of the negatives as you have enumerated, including at sites such as Staight White Guy and Aaaaargh, to name a few.
I’ll keep my mind open while watching….but I’ll watch it.
Just wondering, have you seen the movie?
Regards, and Semper Fi.Posted by Wollf on 03/11/2010 at 04:13 PMYou know what, now that I think about it, there is a big final moral in the Saving Private Ryan movie that you also may have missed. Tom Hank’s character, Captain Miller, allows a German POW to live when his men want to kill him. Hanks tells the German to walk towards the US lines and surrender when he gets there. The German is actually found first by other German forces, and ends up killing Hank’s character at the end of the movie. So, I guess, one could say that it portrays the Germans as mindless myrmidons, unable to think as individuals and spare a man who spared you only days before, while the Americans are portrayed as merciful, even at the expense of their own lives. Again, I’m not really sure where you are seeing the trend to denigrate US troops in either of Hank’s films.
The act of painting a sympathetic picture of certain German troopers (not Germans, as a whole) does not, in my opinion, add up to what you are saying it does. There were good men who were German soldiers. I knew and loved one such man in my youth – almost as if he were a blood grandfather. He’d killed American men with his own two hands, and hated himself for it – all the while knowing that he did what he had to do in order to survive. Some of them, in much the same way as our boys, were thrust into a war that THEY didn’t want to fight, either, and they were simply farmers and factory workers who were forced by fiat of the government purportedly there to serve them, to go and kill other farm boys and factory workers from across an ocean.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 04:39 PMGoober, thanks for the clarifying comment. but at the same thing I’m rankled about having the same message shoved in my face in, “The Longest Day.” I’d love to sit down with you and watch all the BOB episodes so you could retell me I’m talking through my bonnet or I could have the fun of telling you, “I told you so.” Just so you know where I’m coming from, I get an earful every three weeks on the telephone from an old friend in the 80th ID. Who’s seething about Malmedy. And has me reading Mr. Ambrose. So if Rachel really blew some facts, pretty please cut me a little slack. I would appreciate it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 05:11 PMHey Tom! History 101 (in short sentences): The Japanese had no intention of surendering, EVER. It wasn’t in their culture. Thus, we weren’t fighting a war, we were fighting a mindset. Until Hiroshima - a wake up call, at last. Sounds like you need one too.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 05:39 PMWollf,
You Dad. I thank him. I salute him. And appreciate your taking the time to write. As you know, Hanks has been in the news lately saying very strange things about the U.S. war effort in the Pacific. I can’t wait to see, “Pacific.” Frankly, my patience is paper thin when it comes to dissing the Marines who fought there. My patience with Tom Hanks over the years has worn thin. When it comes to making money, he’s number one. When it comes to patriotism, Hanks is missing in action.
Wollf, all my best. Semper Fi. RachWAKE UP, I feel like hugging you for saying what you said. Rach
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 06:49 PMMs. Peepers;
I didn’t mean to give you the third degree on this. I just don’t see that either one of Mr. Hank’s movies can be spun to be anti-american. They are both, as best as can be possibly done, simply the unbiased telling of a story, and they both used men that actually served in order to be more realistic.
I can’t find a bias - I simply can’t.
I also can’t find myself lumping Tom Hanks in with the rest of the Hollywood set. His work has too much honesty and in general, far too good a morality inherent in it for him to fall under the category that some on this comment section seem wont to place him.
Forrest Gump? I mean, come on, that movie had “right-winger wet dream” written all over it! The leftist hippy ends up dying of AIDS, while the dumb, yet hard working and good-intentioned guy, ends up striking it rich because he is willing to apply himself and work hard.
The Green Mile? I haven’t seen a movie come out of hollywood in a long time with a stronger and more appropriate religious undertone than this one. If you missed the “John Coffey as Jesus Christ” parallel in the movie, then… well, I’m not sure what, but I sure saw it. This reminds me of the story that Francis posted (IIRC) last Easter about Longinus and the struggle that he had as a result of his part in the crucifixion of Jesus. The main character, played by Tom Hanks, not only is being punished for his part in the execution of “one of God’s great miracles” but is also horribly afraid of his punishment when he finally is allowed to meet his maker.
Castaway? What a great movie about human endurance and the power of love, above all, to keep us going when we would otherwise give up.
I know that this one sort of came in under the radar, but watch “The Road to Perdition” if you ever get a chance. A story of a man who had chosen to live a bad life, giving it all up to his own peril in order to save his son from the evil that had consumed him.
I could go on, but I will not. I think that I might disagree with what Tom Hanks said in his interviews, but I cannot, based upon his track record, say that it is based upon anythign other than good intentions. You have to know a man by his acts, after all, and the Tom Hanks that I know wouldn’t have it in him to denigrate our troops in the slightest.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 07:01 PMWAKE UP - Right on, man. So true. Anyone that can’t understand that is either delusional or a revisionist. People cannot understand what I mean when I say that dropping the bomb was a kindness compared to what would have befallen had we invaded. I don’t believe that mankind has ever seen a thing like what would have happened had we been forced to invade - we wouldn’t have words to describe the horror.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 07:36 PMExcellent points, Ms. Peepers. I don’t know what Mr. Hanks has been saying lately but if it’s suggesting an equivalency between Japanese troops and U.S. troops he would be way off base, as you clearly demonstrate, to say the least.
Saving Private Ryan had some implausible parts. Sending a captain on such a wild goose chase and not using command channels to locate Ryan are two and another is the captain’s releasing his eventual killer with the dumb injunction that he turn himself in to the nearest MPs—after a pointless and costly assault to take out a German position presumably long since bypassed and/or having no tactical significance. Come ON!
The only objection I had to Spielberg’s film was the inclusion of the scene showing the cowardice of the GI who was but steps away from being able to prevent the death of his fellow troop. I cannot think of a GI’s being so craven as to do that. It was a greasy little episode to include, esp. side by side with the excellent battle scenes earlier. Horrendous carnage is an aspect of combat. Fine. That’s sugar coated in most war movies. That kind of betrayal of a buddy isn’t. It was gratuitous and an insult to those troops. It has to have happened somewhere in that war, but so did selling PX supplies on the black market. Why not include that so we can have the “complete” picture of the realities of war?
Of course, the coward is showing killing the killer of his buddy later on while the guy’s a prisoner, presumably “redeeming” himself, but long past the point of “the heat of combat.”
I have a book about the war in the Pacific and alas I can’t recall the title just now. It made clear that the Allies found out soon enough about the Japanese views on “no surrender” and mistreatment of enemies. Once apprised, our guys adjusted their conduct appropriately.
Posted by Col. B. Bunny on 03/11/2010 at 07:56 PMYou forgot Unit 731:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
I one way I hope Tom Hanks is right; we are different than people who can do these things.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/11/2010 at 09:27 PMI ran across this blog this evening saying a lot of the same things I tried to say. Thought you might be interested in “Cowgirl’s” take on the Hanks statements. Rach
Add millionaire Tom Hanks to the HATE AMERICA too crowd…..* Posted by conservative cowgirl on March 10, 2010 at 1:45pm
* View conservative cowgirl’s blogTom Hanks on WWII: We wanted to annihilate the Japanese because they were “different”
posted at 9:58 pm on March 9, 2010 by Allahpundit
Share on Facebook | printer-friendlyWell, true enough. They were different, all right. In fact, some lucky GIs got to experience the difference firsthand.
If you were expecting an island-hopping reprise of “Band of Brothers” in this new miniseries, expect otherwise.
But the context for Hanks’ history lessons has changed. Band of Brothers, HBO’s best-selling DVD to date, began airing two days before 9/11; The Pacific plays out against a very different backdrop, when the country is weary of war and American exceptionalism is a much tougher sell. World War II in the European theater was a case of massive armies arrayed against an unambiguous evil. The Pacific war was overlaid by a sense that our foes were fundamentally different from us. In that sense, the war in the Pacific bears a closer relation to the complex war on terrorism the U.S. is waging now, making the new series a trickier prospect but one with potential for more depth and resonance. “Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in The Pacific,” Hanks says. “But we also wanted to have people say, ‘We didn’t know our troops did that to Japanese people.’”…
Back in World War II, said Hanks, 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?”Quoth Big Hollywood editor John Nolte: “No matter how many times you read this passage the context is clear. By ‘different’ Hanks is clearly referring to race, culture and religion, not ideology.” Indeed. Is that what was driving FDR all those years — fear and loathing of the “brown people” or whatever? I thought it was the fact that they bombed us and then fought us relentlessly across the Pacific rather than surrender, but maybe I should tune in for The Truth. So screwy is his read, in fact, that I’m not sure it’s even fair to the Japanese: As I understand it, they hit Pearl Harbor not because “our way of living was different” but because they wanted the oil in the south Pacific and needed to neutralize the American fleet before they made their move. I’m also surprised to learn that whereas the Nazis were unambiguous evil, their strategic ally in the far east — whose imperial army utterly terrorized the civilian population of mainland Asia — was merely “different,” much as jihadists are now. That sure does help me get a handle on that Iraq election held a few days ago.
I assume prominent attention will be given in this thing to the bombings of Hiroshima and Tokyo, irrespective of whether they saved lives in the aggregate by shortening the war. Neo-Nazis like to play the same moral equivalence game by crying crocodile tears over the bombing of Dresden; there’s some extra historical context for you in case you choose to watch. Wish I had a clip of Hanks to offer, but this was a print interview, it seems. Is this bit from Bill Maher’s show of Spicoli apologizing for Hugo Chavez a decent substitute? I’ll bet he and Bill will find plenty to like in Hanks’s series.
Update: Here’s a nice related story: Evidently Matt Damon’s new Iraq flick is “one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio.”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/12/2010 at 12:10 AMand another is the captain’s releasing his eventual killer
I am pretty sure that those are two different actors, Bunny.
That kind of betrayal of a buddy isn’t.
I found it plausible.
The character wasn’t a Ranger, hadn’t trained with the unit. Take a guy who sits in the rear with the gear, who probably had not had any combat training after basic, send him haring off with a bunch of commandos he met that morning ... man it’s a wonder he did as well as he did.
High ranking American officers were generally painted as cowardly, callous fools.
I do not think this is the case. The only character in that series who could plausibly be colored such is Norman Dike, who apparently really was not much of a combat leader.
I’m not sure what high ranking is to you, but both the regimental CO (Colonel Sink) and division CG McAuliffe are portrayed favorably.
I’d like to see clips or writing of what Mr. Hanks said. Do you have any links, Rachel?
Posted by Brian Dunbar on 03/12/2010 at 03:10 AMOne of the up(?) sides of being a geezer is having living memory of historic events and personalities. The down side of course is suffering the bullshit revisionist garbage that passes for “history” written by the ideological creeps with an agenda who have seized control of academia since the early 60’s.
I have a close friend of Dutch heritage who was “interned” by the glorious “liberating” armies of imperial Japan on Sumatra in late 1941. He, his mother and surviving sibling were finally liberated in late 1945 just two weeks short of starving to death. His experiences were not conducive to admiration for Japanese imperial “culture”.
The experiences of 3 other of my uncles and cousins in their own combat contacts with the sons of Nippon likewise do not reflect warm and fuzzy attitudes.
The oil fields of Sumatra and Java are not located in the “south Pacific”.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ on 03/12/2010 at 08:53 AMVampires, people that fly, re-animated sewn together body parts, jump-spinning-reverse roundhouse kicks and talking dogs; that’s right, only in a movie.
Movies are not about reality, and were never meant to be. Same goes for reality TV.
Tom Hanks’ job is to express other people’s thoughts and words. Why give a man with so little value such great currency as contradiction?
Only a fool would pay HBO to see a movie, any movie.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/12/2010 at 10:04 AMGiven the massive amount of troops we had in both major theaters of operations, during WWII, it would not be particularly surprising to find out there were perhaps a handful of individuals who gave into the darker side of human nature in committing some sort of atrocity(s) against the enemy.
This being said, what happened on the Axis side of things, particularly regarding the Japanese, would prove to be the rule and not the exception. Hanks (or anyone else) can blame their bestial actions on their culture, the mindset of their military, or even on “the side effects of constantly consuming rice, raw fish, and saki”, for all I care. The bottom line is, we did what we had to do to get rid of this threat, including changing their political, social, and (to some extent) their cultural make up.
Why? Because in the end, it was decided, leaving these things alone (despite having beaten them soundly), allowing for them to continue on in a beguine state, would not prevent them from rising up again at some future point in time.
This is exactly the same situation we find ourselves in today, regarding Islam. We may (eventually, Good Lord willing) beat them soundly. But unless we tear them down and rebuild from the ground up we will surely face them again at some future point in time.
That Hanks purportedly wishes to show that “Americans and Japanese solders ‘hated’ each other” ... sheesh!! Tell us (old timers) something new!! My Uncle Les was a Marine in the South Pacific during that time. He took a Jap bayonet in the back, while coming ashore on Guadalcanal. To this day, he refuses to have anything to do with items “made in Japan”.
Yeah, we were “different” from the Japanese, back in 1941-45. Much as they are today. And thank God for that.
Posted by Guy S. on 03/12/2010 at 10:40 AMAmericans, and indeed the whole world, need to get over the idea that movie stars and other celebrities have any wisdom or insight into the way the world works or into history. Most of them are profoundly ignorant, having been miseducated in the recent past by marxists.
Movie stars in particular are nothing at all but actors, they have no particular training at all in thinking, in philosophy, in history, in ethics, in economics, or any of the other fields where the expound so freely. A good looking robot could fully replace them entirely. It is rank foolishness to listen to them for anything.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/12/2010 at 06:45 PMMr. Dunbar, I thought that the German prisoner taken by the captain’s fire team and who was the man released by him was the man who shot the captain at the bridge. I thought the point of this was the horrible irony of being killed by the man whose life you’d spared. If those were different Germans I certainly got all that wrong.
I think you make some erroneous assumptions. I thought the coward was a part of the unit. A lot of the airborne troops got separated from each other but even if they attached themselves temporarily to other units, they would have been airborne troops who got attached. I didn’t get the impression that the movie’s events took place in an area where airborne troops had been used. Anyway, the Rangers were dropped in.
Notwithstanding that, he wasn’t a temporary attachment, if I recall correctly. Basic infantry training doesn’t always work a transformation of a recruit into a hardened infantryman but I thought any of the GIs I ever trained with would have had no problem getting the job done. The idea that an infantryman could still be a delicate little flower after basic training and needed further toughening in his unit of assignment doesn’t fit reality as I saw it. If someone was that much of a wuss I think he’d have been weeded out during training. Always exceptions, of course, especially when the name of the game is to train huge quantities of men.
Plus, unless the man landed in England and was hustled straight to the embarkation point to the assault boats, he would have received intensive extra training in England with his unit, whether Ranger or no, prior to deployment.
No, the man was deliberately and implausibly cast out of the mold. If one wants to get an idea of what men looked like when they came out of the mold of basic and unit training, he should look at any other of the American troops ANYWHERE in that movie. Heck,, just look at Pvt. Ryan himself. American GIs are pugnacious and well trained. Green they can be but that doesn’t last forever. Inserting this coward character was a cheap Spielberg trick. We’re lucky some other modern, uh, themes weren’t lovingly treated in the movie as well. To achieve complete realism, of course.
Guy S. —Absolutely correct. Accounts by some Marines of their time on some of those islands show that they descended, out of necessity, to the most elemental, primitive state to kill just about anything that moved. All in the context of by-the-rules combat, which is to say, What rules? War crimes only have application to commanders and troops who engage in prolonged atrocities against prisoners and non-combatants. For example, no tactical objective was served by disemboweling Chinese women in Nanjing or practicing cannibalism on allied POWs. Or experimenting on them medically.
We fought them because they were different? WTH?! We fought them because they attacked us, fought viciously, and killed wantonly. That was the long and the short of it, as Ms. Peepers does a darn good job of making clear.
On all sides there are quality men who are caught up in the unimaginable slaughter and their stories are for the ages. Paul Fussell comes to mind along with the familiar names of the British poets in the trenches in France. And George McDonald Fraser. His “Quartered Safe Out Here” is a classic. “Bugles and a Tiger” by John Masters another.
Hanks is a disgrace for attempting to apply his cheap, fatuous, modern delusions to the men who knew what they had to do and why they had to do it—fight a people who had made it their business to kill Americans and degrade and torture them if they captured them.
Only a Hollywood star could believe or utter Hanks’s drivel.
Posted by Col. B. Bunny on 03/13/2010 at 12:41 AMGrandpa BiW fought in the Pacific, and he had freinds at Bataan. He knew full well what the Japanese were capable of, and he never forgave them for their atrocities.
Mr. Hanks has the luxury of growing up in a world where he can question the actions of the men Grandpa fought with, and paint that foe with every hue of honor and nobility without regard to the blood dripping from their hands as they marched across the Pacific. While he may be so deluded in his “enlightenment” that he will not recognize it, the appropriate appellation is “ingrate”.
I’m so glad that Grandpa didn’t live to suffer this insult.
Posted by Blackiswhite, Imperial Consigliere on 03/13/2010 at 12:47 AMIf you are willing to buy real estate, you will have to receive the mortgage loans. Furthermore, my father always uses a secured loan, which occurs to be the most reliable.
Posted by Herrera34Tabitha on 03/13/2010 at 03:58 AMCol. B. Bunny.
Amen.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/13/2010 at 05:04 AMUnk was wounded in WWII and will be buried at Arlington in May with full honors. He once told us kids they took no prisoners. And neither did the enemy. War is hell…or something like that.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/13/2010 at 11:46 AMI thought the coward was a part of the unit.
With respect, no. There is a scene where Miller is assembling his squad and requisitions the soldier for his linguistic skills - he’s clearly from another unit, and the hapless guy expected to be assigned to the rear due to his linguistic skills. My memory is backed in this respect by the wiki entry for the movie.
I didn’t get the impression that the movie’s events took place in an area where airborne troops had been used.The climactic scene takes place after the Rangers have met with the group of paratroopers that Ryan is with.
Anyway, the Rangers were dropped in.
If by ‘dropped’ you mean parachuted, negative. Rangers at this phase of their history were not airborne. At any rate this bunch of Rangers got to Normandy in landing boats.
I thought any of the GIs I ever trained with would have had no problem getting the job done. The idea that an infantryman could still be a delicate little flower after basic training and needed further toughening in his unit of assignment doesn’t fit reality as I saw it.
I don’t know when you were enlisted. There are lots of anecdotal stories of troopers in World War II who were assigned out of their MOS to the infantry, who plausibly claimed they had never handled an M1 and knew two things about life as a grunt: jack and shit. What can I say: times were different back then.
Plus, unless the man landed in England and was hustled straight to the embarkation point to the assault boats, he would have received intensive extra training in England with his unit, whether Ranger or no, prior to deployment.
I think it is possible that you’re seeing the movie through modern eyes. The Army of ‘back then’ seemed to waste little time on teaching a guy anything but his actual MOS. If you’re a linguist in the division rear, well that’s what you spend time on. Teaching a linguist how to be a grunt would be (from their POV) a complete waste of scarce training time.
Posted by Brian Dunbar on 03/13/2010 at 11:47 PMBrian,
You supplied great insights. Thanks. Rach
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/14/2010 at 06:21 AMMr. Dunbar, I stand corrected on the man being an add-on linguist. That said, I consider it implausible that a linguist would have been assigned to a front line unit like that, one more interested in killing Germans than talking to them. I think such a troop would be more likely assigned to S2 or MP units immediately to the rear where primary exploitation of POWs would take place. Doctrine is to silence, segregate, and move POWs quickly away from the front line.
Typo on my part: Rangers were NOT dropped in.It’s possible for a man to be assigned out of his MOS but not to have avoided basic training. No man in the Army then or now could be in the Army longer than 8 weeks and not have qualified with the basic infantry weapon and received basic tactical training.
I don’t know if WWII training involved the Advanced Individual Training of the Vietnam ear Army (surely it must have) but I have no doubt that every medical orderly, cook, telegrapher, typist, linguist, or file clerk went thru basic. The clueless, cowardly linguist theory doesn’t hold up. It was a gratuitous insult inserted by Spielberg to sully the tens of thousands of men who did their job without abandoning their comrades.
I think you’re right about the paratroops. I actually didn’t remember the Rangers being part of the action.
Posted by Colonel B. Bunny on 03/14/2010 at 01:39 PM
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