Reframing racism, or How the pot learned to call the kettle black from protein wisdom

A primer.

Tracked on August 17, 2005 1:57 PM

What's uncomfortable is that the sadistic slant-eyed Japanese soldiers once existed, bombed Pearl Harbor and tortured and killed countless American soldiers and others.
However, justice prevails .. clever as the Japanese are, we managed to get hold of their cars, motorcycles, TVs and lots of other neat stuff. That'll teach em to make us uncomfortable.
Earth .. the whack-job planet

Amen, Duke. For anyone that has doubts on the subject of Japanese war atrocities (and why they need feel NO guilt for Hiroshima/Nagasaki) I heartily recommend 'Knights of Bushido' http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1853674990/104-2023516-2492720?v=glance

Another good book is "FlyBoys"

Japanese militarism was beyond brutal, the cannabalism is a little told story

Yeah, man, that whole "Rape of Nanking" is just a dead white male construct!!

During WW2, millions of Japanese were in the thrall of a pseudo-religious death cult, convinced of their own racial and cultural superiority, and prone to suicide attacks on their opponents. After the Americans nuked them (twice -- the Japanese government actually INCREASED their conditions of surrender AFTER the first bomb), the US forced Japan to become a democracy. Previously, the phrase "Made in Japan" was a byword for junk. After the war, Japan became a world leader in technological innovation, education, filmmaking and literature.

Hey, that all sounds so... familiar...

Except for that last bit, but it's early yet. Let's keep out hopes up, huh?

Perhaps Holden should talk to some WWII P.O.W. vets. I'm sure some of their horrific memories will straighten him out on what went on in those camps and on those death marches....

Hey gang. The Japanese are not the same bad guys today that they were then. Most nations have evolved and improved somewhat since WW2.

Careful about bringing up dirty laundry as we have some of our own. Recent too, VietNam comes to mind. Let it go.

Japanese and others have discovered that chopping off the enemy's head is a waste of energy.

Leave the enemy in one piece so you can sell him stuff and get rich is the modern tactical policy.

It is with relief that we see China working towards economic goals. That means getting along in the world and not rattling nuclear swords as Iran and North Korea do.

There are numbers of Iraqis who want to get their economic engine going. Let's hope they win out over the Jihadists who just want to dump sand into the global gearbox. 73s TG

The image of the imperialist Japanese army and its minions as sadistic and cruel is well deserved. 92,000 allied POWs and slave labourers were either tortured, starved, beaten or worked to death on the Bangkok-Rangoon railway project. In the period of Japanese imperialism in the south pacific and Asia ( refered to as the Asian holocaust) in which 15 million civilians and POWs were systemically murdered.

Historical revisionists who deny the reputation of Imperialist militant Japan was anything other than cruel and sadistic, should be forced to see the allied liberators films of the Japanese prison camps in Burma or China. A good friend of my father survived the Rangoon march and when the end of the war came he was a living skeleton of 80lbs. His stories of having his teeth knocked out by Japanese soldier's rifle butts and the beatings ( he couldn't hear orders as he was made deaf in one ear by a shell explosion)and the inhumane treatment of prisoners effected me deeply as a child. He never could forgive the Japanese.

Perhaps we who never experienced this first hand can forgive the cruelty and war crimes of Imperial Japan...but it is an entirely different matter to deny it happened. That would be ludicrous bordering on anti-intellectual dementia.

http://www.kimsoft.com/kr-japan.htm

It's apparently okay to sanitize history unless it happens to be Germany's atrocities during WWII. Japan is now an economic superpower, and it speaks volumes that the world has been able to forgive the Japanese cruelty at the end of WWII and to make them the country they are today. But in countries like Canada, such cruelty is forgotten in the haste to make restitution to those interned, even though the times dictated it. With the death of Smokey Smith, watch Canada's military history be whitewashed, and more views like Carolyn Parrish's 'a century of peacekeepers' find their way into the schools permanently. When you think about it, since the Liberals became the natural governing party, am I the only one who thinks that at least peripherally, there has been an ongoing attempt to rewrite the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and give the French the victory?

"Careful about bringing up dirty laundry as we have some of our own. Recent too, VietNam comes to mind. Let it go."

History should never be "let go" just because it may hurt the feelings of the PC crowd. We who do not remember and learn from our past are condemned to repeat it, and all that. Does that mean we blame the current Japanese generation for the sins of their fathers? No, of course not; but neither we nor the Japenese must ever forget.

Or are the Germans allowed to "let go" of their role in the Holocaust at some point?

We "put ourselves in danger of believing the soul-corroding lie that all cultures are equally bad or good."

One can only hope that some day somewhere the myth of cultural equality will be destroyed. Sometimes we are more civilized!!!

Did you ever notice how the sins of Communism are allowed to pass by but the sins of Germany and Japan are held front and center?Communism killed more people than the other two combined all in the name of equality and mostly in the countries that they controlled.After the second world war was over the British returned to Soviet forces a goodly number of Russian POWs that the Germans had taken prisoner.They were taken into the forest and shot.We seemed to have let that go.

A single phrase sums up the reason for downplaying Communist mass-murder (and Mao was the worst of all): "pas d'ennemis à gauche".

Mark
Ottawa

Precisely what about "Vietnam comes to mind"?

That the US won every battle during that conflict, despite the almost laughable rules of engagement soldiers were forced to follow?

The Hanoi Hilton, perhaps?

You mean that little girl who was famously napalmed -- by _the Vietnamese_? Or Mai Lai, in which the American villain is remembered, but the American hero is not?

You must mean the one million Cambodians etc who were killed -- by the Communists, AFTER the US was forced to pull out due to presure from communist sponsored "peace groups" at home and their drug-addled fellow travelers. Some were killed for the horrible crime of... wearing eyeglasses.

You mean Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the occurance of both being highly exaggerted by bureaucrats in the VA? Or maybe you mean the crazed ex-Vietnam vets who go on murderous rampages at home -- except that if you do a background check, 95% of these "Vietnam vets" never served.

For more on what really happened, read Stolen Valour and stay away from Oliver Stone movies.

I'm sure Hollywood has no qualms about portraying Americans in Iraq or in Vietnam as dirty imperialistic murdering warmongers, but as soon as you present the Japanese side faithful to history, you get bitchslapped by the PC squad.

For the record, as a history major, nothing pains me more than to see a history movie which snubs accuracy for flair. I'm even hesitant about Platoon because Charlie Sheen's character was a white college boy who volunteered. I just watched Bridge on the River Kwai last night and just about had a heart attack because the prisoners were treated far better than history tells.

Personally, I think it's funny that white people appear to be the ones getting their knickers in a knot over this. After Pearl Harbour came out, they asked Japanese viewers what they thought of Americans calling them "Japs." The response was something like, "Well, that's what they called us during the war, right?"

Let's note that you never saw the UK up in arms when Mel Gibson's The Patriot came out, because it shows the Brits as cruel bastards.

Mao was Trudeau's hero. No surprise there, I guess, thus the Liberals' own Little Red Book (of broken promises and death by taxation).

http://www.2bangkok.com/wwiipropaganda.shtml

Oh and by the way: black and "poor white" soldiers in Vietnam died in _lesser_ numbers than their percentage of the general population at home.

You will never be able to watch a History Channel doc or Vietnam War movie again once you read Stolen Valour. Turns out the most of Born on the 4th of July is made up out of whole cloth; in real life, one of the "bad" officers treated Kovic extremely well, and so forth.

Another book for your consideration: In Enemy Hands (Canadian Prisoners of War 1939-45) by the late Dan Dancocks. Canadian prisoners of war tell their stories of internment - those captured by the Japanese are the most horrific.

Largely as a favor to a colleague, I agreed to submit a few articles to "The Encyclopedia of the Second World War in Europe" on the Double-Cross System and the XX Committee, John Godfrey (WWII RN Intelligence Chief and boss of Ian Fleming), Resistance leader Gunnar Sonsteby, and the like. When the volume finally appeared, the publisher described myself and others as "experts" on the Second World War.

Which distressed me no little bit, because the real experts on that war, from my point of view, were men like my father, who served in the Pacific Theater (USN, QM3, light escort carrier USS Makassar Strait) and bore the scars of that service, mental and physical, for the rest of their lives. His stories of the atrocities wrought by Japanese infantry on captured Marine and Naval pilots and the horrors of Okinawa might be eye-opening to those like Mr. Holden or those who would have the nerve to suggest that America in Vietnam even came close to such outrageous, vile conduct.

If you read the Holden quote again, you'll see a favorite rhetorical trick of the left (or, as the Italians say it, “la sinestra”). Look at the phrase "the stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend".

First, why “slant-eyed”? Is someone claiming that the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army DIDN’T actually have epicanthal folds? Is someone claiming that these folds somehow caused or excused certain behaviors? Would the actions depicted be somehow less sadistic or fiendish if the perpetrators had, say, both eyes on the same side of their heads like a flounder?

No. Eyes (in quantities up to but not exceeding two and uniformly distributed) are expected on fiends and friends alike. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that’s pretty much a norm that we’re all comfortable with. Same for the eyelids. So why bring it up?

Precisely because it IS an ethnic slur, and one of the worst sort possible in 21st century American culture – it’s a slur based on a visible ethnic difference. White Americans have a massive guilt complex when it comes to “visible” ethnicity, and any phrase that reminds them of that complex is therefore extremely uncomfortable. We’ve been trained for four decades to automatically reject any phrase or concept that implies that a visual ethnic difference is an indicator of character or ability.

Stupid as it sounds, some people may be willing to call a sadistic fiend a sadistic fiend, but not if it involves throwing in an ethnic slur. I’m not saying this is a Bad Thing, I just resent it’s being used gratuitously to manipulate opinion.

Now, if Holden had simply referred to “the stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic fiend”, most people would have recognized the other trick he used – using the word “stereotype” as a synonym for “reputation”. Most of us Boomers were trained starting in high school that “stereotypes are Bad”, and ethnic stereotypes are the worst; we automatically reject anything that perpetuates harmful ethnic stereotypes, except, of course, for stereotyping all Americans of Italian descent as being murdering, sadistic, racist Mafia thugs – which is nothing more than good TV.

So, there you have it, the phrase “the reputation of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic fiend”, which would have conjured up an indisputable historic fact, is replaced by a phrase that somehow makes the reader feel that any suspicion about the behavior of the Japanese soldier during WWII must be the result of western (American) racism.

Amazing what a few well-placed words can do, isn't it?

I know sadism is an easy word to spell but the meaning comes from the Marquis de Sade and has sexual connotations. Cruelty and sex, that's sadism.
What more accurately describes the Japanese soldier of the Pacific War in the 20th century is barbarism, savagery, or perhaps, bloodthirstyness. These people had a medieval world view. Pre-enlightenment.

So, the Americans gave them sunshine. Twice.

Iron Lady:

There is no serious attempt to rewrite the Battle of the Plains of Abraham to give the "French" the victory.

However, both squabbling sets of Canadians (English Canadians and French Canadians) have traditionally used their particular versions of this event to serve their own ends.

Far too many English Canadians flatter themselves that "they" defeated the French at Québec. The only "Canadians" at the heights of Abraham were French Canadian habitants and native allies. This was a victory for the British Crown over the French Crown in a protracted world war between the two pre-eminent superpowers of the day.

Plenty of French Canadian nationalists whine and grumble about "la Défaite." Few acknowledge the rather good deal the British gave the defeated colonists: don't cause trouble and you can keep your language, your religion* and your customs. For the average habitant, la Défaite meant changing the name of the King from Louis to George and then business as usual.

Jarrett:

Definition of Canadians that I often use with the Brits:

The guys with the American accents who cheer for the redcoats in "The Patriot."

* It took the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 before Catholic subjects of the Crown in Britain itself were given the same rights to practise their religion as French Canadians.

As a [proud!] descendant of Jacobites, recusants and United Empire Loyalists, I should know.

Sorry Iron Lady, in an otherwise good post with lucid arguments, you threw in this:
"But in countries like Canada, such cruelty is forgotten in the haste to make restitution to those interned, even though the times dictated it."
A little bit sloppy as it doesn't help your argument, nor is it true. 'Such cruelty' wasn't forgotten, even in Canada, in order to make restitution. Most families still have never received any restitution. And what exactly were these times that dictated that third-generation Canadian families, many of whom had never even been to Japan or spoke any Japanese, should have all their belongings taken from them and be sent to detention camps only to return to find that others had 'bought' and sold their land twice already during their incarceration?
It's amazing what gets forgotten, yes.

Hmmm...a favorite rhetorical trick of the left, is it? In a comment thread containing all manner of tired rhetorical stereotyping of the "sinister" Left, no less.

As just one example, the "history major," above, observes that Hollywood has no qualms about portraying Americans in Iraq or in Vietnam as dirty imperialistic murdering warmongers. Just to take a few of the more well-regarded films about Vietnam--The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon--none of these depict Americans as imperialistic, murderous or warmongering, and neither are the Vietnamese idealized. That's what makes them all such good films.

Too, in Powerloin's post, David Gelertner is quoted as saying that some Americans nowadays seem to think America's behavior during the war was worse than Japan's. Undoubtedly the result of "PC" universities, and a nicely played stereotype, but the problem is that this is flatly ridiculous. Japanese atrocities are well-known, especially by people who study this stuff for a living, and are in the forefront of many minds today by virtue of the fact that China has been making such a big stink about them recently.

Doubtless the Japanese have been very reluctant to acknowledge their brutal past, but they are hardly alone in this. There has, in fact, been only one people who have fully submitted themselves to the judgment of history, and committed themselves to assuage and compensate their former foes and victims: the Germans. They have paid, and continue to pay, billions in reparations, and yearly proclaim their national guilt, while gingerly asserting their legitimate security interests for fear of opening old wounds. But you suggest the United States make reparations to the descendants of interned Japanese-Americans or enslaved African-Americans, and American conservatives shit a brick.

How can all this right-wing blather about confronting history be taken seriously when most of you guys don't even have a handle on what's going on today?

Oh, and "history major," Charlie Sheen's character in Platoon was based on a real person, Oliver Stone, himself, a white college boy who volunteered for combat, like John Kerry, and quite unlike many in a US administration who have shown themselves eager to send American soldiers to do what they gamed the system to avoid when it was their turn to serve.

Of course, pointing this out is, I know, doing a disservice to history in some PC manner.

I'm afraid you all are really behind the curve, including Holden, Next 93, and all the rest.

What with the "peaceful rise" Communist China, and the CCP's unending demands to pour fuel on the embers of their past wounds to justify their own cruel treatment of the Chinese people, Japanese-hating stereotypes are now IN. I guaran-d**n-tee this was half the reason the film finally made it to release in the first place (whereas a film on the Tiananmen Square massacre sends the studio execs running for the hills).

I'm guessing Holden just missed the memo.

Speller says,
* So the Americans gave them sunshine twice*.

The vast majority are informed about the atrocities of recent wars. From Pearl Harbour to POW crimes to the meanist atrocity of the Enola-gay. The twice delivered sunshine, as you put it, is every inch an atrocity, no matter how justified.

Hollywood and television re-run these events for our viewing on a regular basis. We carry these things in our collective sub-concious mind.

The important thing is not to equate these past crimes and errors to the people of today.

The majority of people walking beside you in our streets today who may look foreign are in fact Canadian citizens. Most speak english with very little accent because they finished school here.

Not much point ranting about atrocities of sixty years ago within earshot of national decendants who are fifty years old or younger.

These Canadian citizens are all keenly aware of the bad parts of their ancestoral history. They go to movies and watch television too.

Things are gradually improving with us Earthlings. Progress is slow, but progress is being made. 73s TG

I love to hike in the Kananaskis. Lots of Grizzlies do too.

Tony, I've seen movies of Japanese women and children in platoons training with spears. After the performance of the Kamikazes, I don't doubt they would have done their duty for their Emperor/God as well.

One of the conditions of surrender was that Hirohito had to go on radio and admit that he was a man. Can you even begin to comprehend the darkness the Japanese people lived in?

Not only had Japan NEVER been invaded or defeated in war, but before they defeated China, Burma, and the US in Hawaii and the Philipines,(which was an American territory) they defeated Russia in a War in the North Pacific.

Modern mechanized war then, like today, is a come as you are affair. Mechanized forces need HUGE numbers of civilians for support to keep them in the field. Bombing of civilians was totally necessary in the European as well as the Pacific War.

In Europe, the carpet bombing of civilian centres was a strategic necessity to slave German aircraft production to fighters for defense, instead of bombers for offensive and tactical operations. The fire bombings of Nurnburg and Dresden produced more deaths and casualties than Hiroshima and Nagaski.

The fire bombings of Tokyo produced the most aerial bombing deaths.

All with so-called 'conventional' weapons. Bombs made from white phosphorus. The difference was the number of aircraft and aircrew lost.

When ReichsFeldmarschal Paulus laid seige to Stalingrad, he killed over 2 million people. The Soviets lost another 2 million at Leningrad.

What we call World War II, the Soviets call 'The Great Patriotic War'. They lost 20 million people.

The Soviets constantly demanded the Western Armies open a new front against the Germans. The only answer was aerial bombardment.

American sunshine saved lives. Both Americans and Japanese. When the Japanese empire surrendered, the Japanese Imperial Army still had nearly 10 million men under arms, mostly in China.

The distinction between 'conventional' and noncoventional weapons is entirely a construct of Western Democracies. It isn't recognized by totalitarian governments who are unaccountable to their own people.

Lord of The Rings is Racist / Orcs = Black People

King Kong is Racist / Apes = Black People

But wingnuts are racist, even though I think monsters and apes resemble people of color.

How dare anyone portray the Japanses as sadistic fiends.  Just because they were fiendishly sadistic and sadistically fiendish is no reason to accurate portray their crimes if that furthers a negative stereotype.

Because that is the real fiendish sadism: ethnic stereotyping.

Kerry didn't volunteer for combat. He did everything possible to avoid it and then copped out early on a technicality when inadvertently faced with it.

TonyGuitar

I suppose it doesn't mean anything that we killed far, far more Japanese civilians with conventional bombing than we ever did with those 2 nukes. It was only because we used those that the war ended.

Had the Japanese finished first, they would have used them on us. One plan was to nuke San Fran.

Keep that in mind when talking about the 'atrocity'.

There is no doubt that the Japanese soldiers committed unspeakable atrocities during WWII. These soldiers were desensitized to that brutality by their training, which was conducted ruthlessly, enforced by beatings and accompanied by racist political indoctrination. The Japanese were in the grip of a totalitarian dictatorship that controlled the media and allowed no dissent. Socialists, communists and any other type of non-conformists were disappeared when discovered.

For a good view of the wartime lives of the Japanese, read "A Boy Called H" by Kappa Senoh. It is a fascinating, poignant, funny and tragic story as told by a small precocious boy from a Westernized family. It describes the lunacy of the military government's policies and propaganda and how many people disbelieved the government but still went with the program out of fear, conformism or patriotism. It details how the population was being organized and trained to resist invasion, school boys, women and old folks.

TonyGuitar- you're that special kind of moron who gets his 'facts' and 'history' from tv and the movies, huh?

Try reading something other than a comic book for once.

(yes, you do deserve the ad hominem attack)

The NYT reviewer is the one who introduced the derogatory language. Who's the racist there?

And stow your glee about China. Nixon, Clinton, and Japan's economic sellout to the Chinese have made them the single greatest strategic threat in the world.

Zipperheads...

I saw the movie and the voice over at the beginning specificies that the population were swayed by a steady dose of propaganda. There was no racial condemnation. The reviewer's allegation just shows the lack of critical thinking going on about race or religion today. No enemies allowed except skinheads and Nazis!

Good post, Speller. I read that the bombing of Tokyo killed three times the people that The Bomb did.

I commend Oliver Stone and also Wm. Broyles, screenwriter for Jarhead, for their service. That doesn't mean that Stone is not today a stoned out jerk whose movies I dislike. Don't want to see Jarhead, either, after seeing the trailer.

i come from best search engine http://www.google.com