Remember Peal Harbor

By Dick McCullough

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Another Pearl Harbor movie is hitting the big screen right now, with all the hype normally associated with a studio movie, proving once again, in the land of plenty, sizzle is more important than steak. In a recent PR sound bite, it was noted that the movie was being re-edited to remove some dialog that potentially might offend Japanese or German viewers. This, of course, is just one more example of how close political correctness is drawing us to the brink of insanity. What's next, libel suits by Idi Amin? Reparations for Hitler's heirs? Doesn't truth matter any more?

An Australian friend of mine, old enough to remember WWII, was oddly unconcerned with offending the Japanese. He seemed to think that their surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, their torture and murder of Aussie (among other) POW's, their treatment of Chinese and Korean civilians, ad nauseum, was offensive to the degree that no more offense could be taken. But my Aussie friend was always strangely rational. He annoys a lot of people.

It seems to me that racism and war mongering go hand in hand. If you look back at the countries that have a consistent history of military aggression (I won't mention any countries specifically, like Germany, Japan or the US), they seem to all be racist states. And that makes sense. It's easier to justify killing other people if you consider those people inferior to you. That gives you a right to kill them.

But you're never killing groups. You're killing people, individual people. With individual stories, unique histories, specific hopes and dreams.

One Japanese family moved from Japan to the United States before WWII. They had a son. At the outbreak of WWII, the son was in college, studying engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Just before end of his senior year, just before his last set of finals leading to his degree, the son and the entire family were forced into an internment camp. The son was physically forced to leave school, skip his finals, lose the degree he was so close to having earned.

Being imprisoned, having committed no crime, having been torn from their home and community, was difficult enough. But to lose the dream of a college education. A career as an engineer. This was difficult for the entire family to accept. But they had no choice.

There was little to do in the camp. One day, the son was lying on his cot, mind wandering. A letter came. It was from the University of California at Berkeley. He had done so well in his course work, the University decided to award him his engineering degree despite his failing to complete his finals. Not everyone in America was crazy (Go, Cal!).

After he was released from the internment camp, he stayed in the US and, without bitterness, began his career as an engineer.

And as a footnote: this almost-not-an engineer would later invent a computer chip that encrypts digital signals so that they cannot be intercepted and deciphered. The US government bought the patent from him for several million dollars. He retired a very rich man, the American Dream personified.

Another Japanese family moved to Canada. They had two sons. The parents were old school but the boys were Canadian. Didn't even speak Japanese. When the war broke out, the parents felt an obligation to the homeland.

They sent their oldest son home to Japan to fight for the mother country and defend the family's honor.

That's all well and good. But to the Japanese, this young man was a foreigner. He looked Japanese, but he didn't sound it. And he didn't act it, either. Somehow, he managed to get in the Army to serve the Emperor, a dutiful son obeying his parents' wishes.

But his life during the war was hell. His fellow soldiers ridiculed and abused him constantly. He couldn't understand the language, hated the food, the customs, the country itself. He was Canadian, eh? Why would he fit in? It was as if you or I had joined the Japanese army. As soon as the war ended, he returned to Canada, grateful to have survived not the enemy but his fellow soldiers.

His younger brother became an engineer in Houston, working for a big US oil company. The Houston brother had a beautiful daughter. And she suffered regular discrimination at the hands of her Texas peers.

His brother was abused for not being a cultural Japanese by the Japanese, even though he was pure Japanese biologically. His daughter was abused for not being whatever it is Texans think is a biological Texan (surely they wouldn't admit Mexicans qualify?) even though she was culturally a Texan, complete with twangy drawl.

The brother wasn't Japanese enough but the daughter was too Japanese.

Is this a crazy world or what? Racism knows no geo-political (or rational) boundaries.

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