VDH Gives Hanks His Due and a History Lesson

VDH has a doozy up correcting Tom Hanks’ misconception that racial animosity precipitated and sustained the bloody Pacific Theatre of World War II.  VDH also gives Hanks’ his due “consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II[] and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers.”

Read the whole thing.  Excerpts below.

Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:

1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.

Socio-Political