Tom Hanks insults our troops in Pacific interview

General General Discussion
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Selwyn Duke is always good for a commentary:

http://selwynduke.typepad.com/selwyndukecom/2010/03/and-thats-all-he-has-to-say-about-that-tom-hanks-and-twisted-history.html

It’s ok, Tom, I don’t have to watch your series.

http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/tom-hanks-controversial-war-comments

Tom Hanks controversial war comments
HBO miniseries "The Pacific” starts Sunday
Updated: Friday, 12 Mar 2010, 9:34 AM CST
Published : Thursday, 11 Mar 2010, 9:24 PM CST

Kip Raley
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Tom Hanks is catching some flack after making some controversial comments to TIME magazine. Hanks was interviewed about the upcoming World War II miniseries "The Pacific”.

Hanks is on the cover of the magazine, which hits newsstands Friday. The article comes out just two days before the premiere of the HBO miniseries.

Hanks is an executive producer of the series. In his interview with TIME, Hanks said he wants Americans to understand the good and the bad of American history.

Hanks told the magazine, “Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in ‘The Pacific’, but we also wanted to have people say, ‘We didn’t know our troops did that to Japanese people.’”

Hanks went on to say that he believes there are similarities between World War II and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar by any chance, to what’s going on today?” Hanks said.

When Hanks was asked about the miniseries earlier this week he said, “The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs from a civilization that didn’t recognize the advancement of human kind. Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?”

The ten-part HBO miniseries starts Sunday. It highlights battles on Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Mobile natives Dr. Sid Phillips and the late Eugene Sledge are central characters in the series.

Huh, you mean like killing thousands of POW’s? Or raping and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Chinese in a captured city? Or genital mutilation? Or treating women worse than most people treat their dogs? Like bombing people because they believe only 90% of what you believe? Oh, sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean to look at people like that as not recognizing the advancement of human kind.

Here’s contact info:

http://famous-relationships.topsynergy.com/Tom_Hanks/Contact.asp

I haven’t verified the contact info.

At least there’s been a positive response:
http://www.atomicnerds.com/?p=3319

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Another relativist libtard.

Forrest Gump was autobiographical.

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I shudder to think what would happen if we had to fight the Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese Army with our current “leadership”. :rolleyes:

Would we see Democrats flying to Berlin to condemn American “imperialism”, and praising Germany’s health care system…

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Not to in any way defend what he said, but my grandfather who served in the Pacific felt that way about Japanese people up till the day he died.

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yeah…i have to concur with this…my grandfather was a Marine from 1938-1975…he too, um, felt very strongly about the Japanese

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But, the point is, that is not the reason we went to war against the Japanese. They attacked us.

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Actually, there were some significant Americans in the 1930s who did exactly that and urged Roosevelt to sign a neutrality agreement with Germany. Anyone remember Charles Lindbergh?

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They attacked us because we provoked them to do so and gave them little alternative. We provoked them in an effort to disrupt and impair their ability to carry out brutal military aggression against other yellow people who couldn’t defend themselves. The history of WWII did not start on December 7, 1941.

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Hanks is a superficially thinking fool that mistakes dehumanizing one’s enemy, in order to facilitate that enemy’s destruction, with racism. If the US was “racist” against Asians, then how would Hanks explain the fact that we had other Asians as allies, for example the Chinese.

Hanks and the rest of the Hollywood retards need to understand that when one is in a killing war with an enemy, in a fight to the death, it is not conducive to one’s survival, let alone victory, to view that enemy as a beautiful and luminous human being. Instead you see him as the dirty subhuman animal that he is, who will tear our head off, reach down the neck hole, and eat our heart raw.

War is kill or be killed, in the most graphic, lurid, crass, and uncivilized manner that one can think of, and if we should fight it thinking any differently, the enemy will be the one dancing on our carcass and rejoicing the killing of the infidel pig ape.

But, Hanks is a man, that, plays pretend. Kind of hard to take a man that makes a living playing as a child would, too seriously.

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I don’t know how wrong he is, most WW2 vets I’ve ever heard talk about it didn’t think kindly of the Japanese people. And the Japanese didn’t think kindly of us. Hell they where willing to kill their children from fear of the evil Americans. We did target and kill about 200,000 civilians (Don’t see that happening ever again) so maybe they had some justification in that fear :smiley: .

So I don’t think we though to highly of them at the time. I’m pretty sure the same happens in every war, or else you wouldn’t be at war.

It was a horrible war millions died and I’m sure all sides hated each other plenty.

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but he never said that was why we went to war.

the bit about racism…well there were Japanese internment camps here in the US.

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i think thats all he was really saying.

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I was going to say the same thing. We had (and still have) lots of communists and nazis in the US supporting our enemies, and wanting us out of the war. Communism wasn’t really a dirty word and political position until the Cold War, and since that ended communism is becoming what it was in the 20’s and 30’s… FDR was a huge socialist who was running rampant in the 30’s instituting socialism in the US, and his failed policies were “bailed out” by WW2. Pretty much the entire 30’s under FDR was a depression, and a couple recessions. The war on the Supreme Court, court packing, the new deal, Social Security Act, etc. A lot of the entitlement mentality comes from FDR’s terms as president. But anyways there were huge open rallies around nazism (national socialists) and communism right in the streets. Read up on some old unions like the AFL-CIO… a lot of these big unions came about from communist organizers trying to mass people together to push for “change”. ACORN and SEIU are same thing different name and people.

In regards to Tom Hanks he is a typical liberal who will say and do anything to disparage people he doesn’t like. Why “conservatives” toss money at these people is beyond me. I don’t subscribe to HBO because its full of anti-America full on douche liberals. Check our Bill Maher on HBO. These are the types of people HBO employs. I wouldn’t buy a cheese burger from a stand that had employees talking about how much America sucks and how we’re all just racists for defending the country let alone pay them for entertainment.

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The Pacific War was indeed tinged with racism on both sides, far more than the war in Europe. This has been widely acknowledged amongst historians for many years, it isn’t some insult that Tom Hanks came up with.

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You’re right about that. The whole concentration camp thing had nothing to do with racism or bigotry.

Tom Hanks is an idiot. Anybody watch Greenzone? Makes you wish they failed when they saved Private Ryans dumbass.

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Can you image our Government putting out these kinds of posters today?

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We shoulda used the big bomb earlier.

I thank the lord, everytime the atomic bomb comes up. I am alive today because of that bomb.

Both grand fathers served in WWII, one in the pacific, and one as a bombardier over germany and france.

A closed mouth gathers no foot. These celebs are movie stars, not political analysts or historians, so they should keep their opinion out of the public. No matter what they say, someone will be pissed.

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What kind of response is that? The concentration camps had nothing to do with the fighting war, they were creations of political terror.

There was plenty of racism going both ways in the Pacific war, and whoever instigated the conflict does not change historical fact. The racist rhetoric on both sides was encouraged by government propagandists for morale and financial reasons.

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Every single nation did horrible things during that war. The Germans, Americans, British, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, and so forth. We won so our terrible things are considered less terrible.:cool:

A couple of people mentioned the nuclear bombs, but let’s not forget the firebombing…we too slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians and injured millions.

BTW…just because some actor says something doesn’t make it worth listening to, nor does it automatically mean he thinks poorly of veterans nor those currently serving.

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The article to me read like Hanks is trying to compare the Pacific theater of WWII to the war on terror today, mentioning suicide attacks. Modern jihadists are fanatics, as were the Imperial Japanese. The similarities really end there.

The part he said about racism however is true, and as a former serviceman, I don’t think he is making a disparaging remark on them, or their service. He is simply acknowledging the line of thought of the time.

Our very own service was segregated, as was everything else in the country at home. Mind you, the War offered millions of jobs to women, and ethnic minorities, but that doesn’t mean they were “accepted” as your average “white” Americans.

Like the Germans, the Japanese also thought they were the superior “race” in the East, and their cruelty to the people of the Asian nations they occupied is well known and documented.

It is true that there is a psychological tactic in dehumanizing the enemy with embellished physical/personality traits, slurs, and exaggerated caricatures in propaganda, but I would not doubt that these sentiments fell far from the mark even before the war started for Americans.

A racial type slur was derived for the enemy in all major subsequent wars (typing them would get me in trouble but think about Korea and Vietnam and you’ll figure it out), and there is a term for the people in Afghanistan and Iraq today. In fairness, there was a term for the Germans too, and they were white. That term however doesn’t resonate as strongly as terms for the Japanese for that reason in my opinion. Also, you can apply a lot more of the romanticism of WWII to the European campaign, whereas there was none at al in the Pacific.

I think we are all racist in some way, and that’s fine, none of it bothers or offends me. There is however, “true racism”, “friendly racism”, and just being “situationally aware” given your environment, but I won’t go into what I mean for the three to not hijack the thread.