By Neela Banerjee
In the opening scene of the Hollywood extravaganza Pearl Harbor, the young heroes Rafe and Danny hijack a crop-duster in their rural Tennessee backyard. Consumed by their excitement that they actually flew — which, of course, foreshadows their future as World War II pilots — they don’t notice Danny’s overall-wearing father sneaking up to take his son away in a fit of anger. Rafe, the strong yet illiterate one, defends his friend by smashing a wood two-by-four over his father’s head and calling him a “dirty German.” The insult reduces the father to a stuttering heap, as he declares that he fought hard in the last war.
Scenes like this abound in the 3-hour, $140-million epic movie that swept box offices this past weekend to become the No. 1 movie in the United States, bringing in some $75 million.
 Along with heavy-handed cliches and simplistic dialogue, the movie displays an utter ignorance of the existence and struggles of entire communities of people. When Rafe spits out “dirty German,” his words echo in the empty barracks and against the barbed-wire fences of the internment camps that incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans.
Even though the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) worked with Disney and the creators of the film to make sure that nothing too objectionable was allowed in, hostile repercussions were felt even before the movie came out. At a press conference sponsored by the Coalition Against Racial and Ethnic Scapegoating (CARES) in San Francisco’s Japantown, national director of the JACL John Tateishi said that his organization had already received hate mail with messages such as: “We won the war” and “We’ll take you out of this country in a body bag.”
Tateishi clearly reiterated JACL’s stance, which is not against the film, and said that he found very little in the movie that is objectionable.
“It is not that we want to deny what Pearl Harbor was about,” Tateishi said. “We are just afraid that audiences will come away with a sense of confusion about who we are. We have been scapegoats for 60 years.”
Diane Chin, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, said the press conference was called not so much for the film itself, but for possible reactions to the film. The San Francisco police department stepped up security in Asian American neighborhoods and around movie theaters. No incidents were reported throughout the opening weekend.
Looking at the production team behind Pearl Harbor, certain things make more sense. The film’s producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Michael Bay are responsible for action adventures, such as Top Gun, The Rock and Armageddon — Hollywood blockbusters that pander to mainstream America.
Screenwriter Randall Wallace, who is also responsible for Braveheart, admits his methods are viewed as unorthodox.
“I sometimes offend people when I tell them this, but it’s true,” Wallace said. “I do in-depth research after I’ve written my first draft.”
Perhaps that explains why few APIs are depicted in the movie. What Wallace failed to fill in was that historically, the Polynesian seafaring people are said to have arrived on the Hawaiian islands as early as 1100 B.C. Since then, Asian ethnic groups have dominated the islands’ population. In 1868, contract laborers from Japan began arriving in Hawaii. Many Japanese laborers became naturalized citizens in the Kingdom of Hawaii. But when Hawaii was illegally annexed in 1898, the United States refused to recognize these former Hawaiian citizens as U.S. citizens. The 1940 Census found 126,947 Japanese in the United States, of which many resided in Hawaii, far outnumbering the white population there.
“There was no depiction of the local community there,” U.C. Berkeley ethnic studies professor Ronald Takaki said. “It could have been Vermont.”
He added: “Many of the causalities of Pearl Harbor were Japanese Americans killed in friendly fire. Many of those waiting to donate blood at the hospitals were Japanese Americans. Many of the national guard soldiers were Japanese American.”
The movie focuses heavily on the patriotism of the soldiers and even the Japanese military is characterized as a group of noble foreigners, who must attack the United States for survival. The scenes featuring the Japanese army are very stylized, with heavy Taiko drumming and the Japanese admiral, played by Mako, speaking in poetically cliched subtitles.
At the CARES press conference, 79-year old veteran Wally Nunotani of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) spoke about his experience living in Hawaii in 1941 and fighting for the United States during the war.
“I felt a deep sense of shock and shame and anger that the country where my parents come from could do such a dastardly thing,” Nunotani said. “We had no allegiance to Japan.”
In 1943, the War Department, in response to heavy lobbying by the JACL, announced plans to form an all-Japanese American combat team. The call was for 1,500 volunteers. Some 10,000 Japanese Americans volunteered. In May of that year, the 442nd RCT began training and was in Europe by 1944. The 442nd was the most decorated unit in United States military history, for its size and length of service, earning 18,143 individual decorations.
Along with the absence of historical facts concerning Asian Americans, Takaki fears that the movie’s subtext plays into the United States government’s move towards militarization.
“The release of this movie on Memorial Day Weekend, a time of intense patriotism, will highlight the rising conflict between the United States and China,” Takaki said. “The subtext of Pearl Harbor is that the United States has to do all they can to avoid another surprise attack. Meanwhile, last week President Bush gave funding to the Missile Defense Shield. It is the same thing as Pearl Harbor, except this time with nuclear missiles, and the enemy this time is China, not Japan.” |
