Another look at Tom Hanks

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Jim Robbins has a nice look at the bone stupid remarks by Tom Hanks. Was the "Greatest Generation" just a bunch of racists? Actor and producer Tom Hanks, promoting his new World War II series "The Pacific," suggested that the war with Japan was really all about American intolerance; and by the way, so is the war on terrorism...... The idea that the United States was making war on "the yellow people" is nonsense, however. America was allied with China and fought to liberate all parts of Asia that had been overrun by the Japanese Empire, including the Philippines, which was a U.S. commonwealth. The fact that the Japanese were Asians did not make a conflict against the nation of Japan a de facto race war. Racism did play an explicit role on the Japanese side, where ultranationalist militarists used racial philosophies to justify the conquest and exploitation of other (particularly Asian) peoples. Allied prisoners of war were denied their rights under the Geneva Conventions, used as slave labor, routinely tortured and ritually beheaded. Thousands of helpless prisoners of war and civilians were massacred by the Japanese during the course of the conflict. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, document No. 2726 contained more than 14,000 pages of affidavits describing separate atrocities committed in the Philippines alone.

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Posted Mar 19 2010, 06:26 AM by BLACKFIVE