Ignorant as an actor: Tom Hanks on the war in the Pacific
I enjoyed the first episode of HBO’s The Pacific, but my enjoyment was somewhat marred by hearing Tom Hanks, one of the miniseries’ producers, state that the war with Japan was based on racism, which he then compared to the current war on terrorism.
Raymond Chandler’s detective character Philip Marlowe summed up an actor-turned-hood in one of Chandler’s great novels by stating that the phrase “ignorant as an actor” was invented for him.
Ditto for Hanks.
Rich Trzupek offers a good response to Hanks’ comment in FrontPage Magazine
“The implication that race had anything to do with the war is nothing but nonsensical, unsupportable, neo-historical propaganda,” Trzupek wrote.
Perhaps a screenwriter should be hired to inform Hanks that the Japanese declared war on America by bombing Pearl Harbor and America had Asian allies who fought alongside us like China and the Philippines.
Someone should tell Hanks to shut up and roll the film.
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Sounds like Hanks is up on his Zinn. The thing is, there certainly was a racial element to some US propaganda indicting the Japanese and these posters etc are focused on relentlessly by those who would love to delegitimize all forceful action by America, mostly today’s. But similar things were done re the Germans; the Hun, the Krauts…. and last I checked, they were white so what was racial and what not is unclear but what is crystal clear is that there were naked, murderous and racially based crimes being committed by the Axis and these were stopped by the Allies, foremost US! Anyone distressed by racism should know that. Obviously this does not include Tom Hanks or his numberless fellows.
Try reading John Dower’s “War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War” It’s a pretty good book, and it’s what Hanks is alluding to. It’s also much more balanced than you probably think, concerning racism on both sides of the conflict.