Debunking movie myths
Some class truth about Pearl Harbor
By Greg
Butterfield
A young couple's romance is disrupted by a foreign enemy's
unprovoked attack on a peaceful Pacific isle.
That's the mythical tale depicted in "Pearl Harbor," the
blockbuster film produced by the Walt Disney Co., chock full
of Hollywood stars and state-of-the-art special effects.
"Pearl Harbor" opened Memorial Day weekend to
unprecedented commercial and political hype. It claims to
tell the story of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese air attack on
the U.S. Navy station in Hawaii. The film depicts a reluctant
United States being dragged into World War II by Japanese
aggression.
With the Pentagon's blessing, the producers shot much of
the film aboard Navy vessels at the real Pearl Harbor.
Ironically, the film's release coincides with the U.S.
government's behind-the-scenes effort to bolster resurgent
militarist forces in Japan with the aim of building an
imperialist military alliance against the People's Republic
of China. Untold millions of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and
other Asian peasants and workers died fighting Japan's brutal
colonial occupation of their countries during the 1930s and
1940s.
A film like "Pearl Harbor" has the potential to mislead
millions of workers and young people about the real nature of
World War II and the U.S. role in it.
Japanese American and other Asian American groups say it
could also spark a new wave of racist violence against Asian
people in this country. They note that all of the Asian
people in the film are depicted as enemies.
At a Los Angeles rally calling for a boycott of "Pearl
Harbor," Floyd Mori, president of the Japanese American
Citizens League, said, "No matter what we achieve ... how far
we've come in this country, when the topic of Pearl Harbor
comes up, we're always dragged back to the event." (Reuters,
May 21)
Other speakers noted that there's no mention of the U.S.
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the war's end,
nor of the round-up of Japanese American civilians into
prison camps.
What workers need to know
So what is it that Disney, the Pentagon and crew are
trying to hide behind the love story and multi-million-dollar
special effects?
First of all, for the U.S. government, big business and
the military, World War II wasn't a "war against fascism." It
was a war among the imperialist powers to redivide the
world's riches.
In the Pacific, that meant a war with Japan for control of
the natural resources, labor and markets of Asia. Wall Street
and Washington were itching for a fight.
"Pearl Harbor, in a military-political sense, was very
much like the beginning of the Spanish-American War," wrote
Vince Copeland, the founding editor of Workers World, in his
1968 pamphlet "Expanding Empire."
"The Battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor in 1898,
and Washington used it as an excuse to declare war on Spain.
But Spain needed the sinking of the Maine like it needed the
proverbial hole in the head. And U.S. big business needed a
war with Spain.
"This is not to say that the Dec. 7, 1941, attack was in
itself a hoax or that the Japanese did not really kill over
3,000 U.S. sailors by sending them to the bottom of Pearl
Harbor," Copeland continued.
"They did. But some thoughtful people later considered it
strange that the Japanese imperialists should have done
something so 'stupid' as to bring the U.S. into the war
against them just when they had their hands full in China and
had taken over Indochina from the French imperialists. ...
Why on earth would the Japanese want the powerful U.S. to
make war on them at just such a time, when they needed U.S.
neutrality more than anything else?" he asked.
"The fact is that the Japan-U.S. war was inevitable, given
the U.S.-Japanese antagonisms over markets, possessions and
economic colonies in Asia. But the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor was not at all inevitable. It was not the inevitable
beginning of the war.
"On the contrary," Copeland asserted, "this attack was
deliberately maneuvered by the politicians of big business,
led at that time by Franklin D. Roosevelt."
Blood for oil
It must be remembered that Japan wasn't the only brutal
colonial power in Asia. Britain ruled India and Hong Kong
with an iron fist. France dominated Southeast Asia.
The United States had taken possession of the Philippines,
Guam and other Pacific islands during the Spanish-American
War. From 1900 onward, Washington bloodily suppressed
continual uprisings by the Filipino people.
And then there was Hawaii itself, the site of Pearl
Harbor-robbed from its Indigenous inhabitants by U.S. gunboat
diplomacy.
Although Pearl Harbor is best remembered, Japan also
targeted U.S. military bases throughout the Pacific on Dec.
7, 1941.
The war between Japan and the United States had its roots
in the imperialist redivision of the world that took place
after World War I ended. At that time Washington became the
senior partner in the U.S.-British-Japanese alliance that
dominated China.
In the book "A Political History of Japanese Capitalism,"
Jon Halliday writes about the agreement signed at a 1921
Washington conference on China:
"The imperialist powers who gathered at Washington all
agreed on one thing: that they should continue to plunder
China and exploit the Chinese people. In [Japanese Premier]
Saito's words, the arrangement 'which emerged from the
Washington Conference could be said to be based on a new form
of suppressing China.'"
But Japan's ruling class and military caste chafed in the
role of "junior partner" assigned to them by the Western
imperialists-especially after the Great Depression took hold.
Following the capitalist law of "expand or die," Japan came
into open conflict with U.S.-British domination of the region
and of China in particular.
As Japanese exports grew to the detriment of the Western
powers, and as the Japanese army clashed with the U.S.-backed
Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek in China, Washington hit
back with tariffs and racist laws banning Asian immigration
and property ownership.
"Although most of Southeast Asia was in the hands of
European powers, Japan's key negotiations were with the
United States," wrote Halliday. "This was not primarily
because of America's colonial possession in Asia, the
Philippines, but because of America's key role in Japan's
trade, particularly in strategic raw materials.
"The United States began seriously to squeeze Japan in
July 1940 when it introduced a licensing system for certain
U.S. exports to that country. The two crucial items, crude
oil and scrap iron, were added to the list after Japan
occupied Northern Indochina in September 1940. A full embargo
followed on July 26, 1941.
"The American embargo, particularly on oil, severely
limited Japan's ability to maneuver," Halliday explained.
"Much of Japanese diplomacy prior to December 1941 was taken
up with trying to secure supplies of oil. ... Prior to Pearl
Harbor, Japan had only about 18 months' supply.
"In November 1941, when the talks with Washington were
already well advanced, Japan proposed universal
non-discrimination in commercial relations in the Pacific
area, including China, if this principle were adopted
throughout the world. To the United States ... this was
'unthinkable.' Japan was, on the whole, eager to reach a
settlement and offered considerable concessions to this
end."
Halliday concludes that "America could certainly have
reached a temporary settlement within the framework of an
imperialist carve-up which gave Japan slightly more than it
had been granted in Washington in 1921-22. It was America
which turned down the Japanese proposal for a summit meeting
between Premier Konoe and Roosevelt in autumn 1941. And it
was Secretary of State Cordell Hull's outright rejection of
Japan's proposals of Nov. 7, 1941, which brought negotiations
to a halt."
'We were likely to be attacked'
U.S. imperialism, Copeland writes in "Expanding Empire,"
maneuvered Japan into "firing the first shot" so that
Washington would appear to be waging a defensive war. This
was vital, since anti-war sentiment remained strong at
home.
Copeland refers to a revealing document first published in
the 1947 book "President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War"
by historian Charles A. Beard. It's an excerpt from the diary
of Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, dated Nov.
25, 1941-about two weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack.
"Then at 12 o'clock we went to the White House, where we
were until nearly half past one," Stimson wrote. "At the
meeting were Hull, Knox, Marshall, Stark and myself. There
the President ... brought up entirely the relations with the
Japanese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be
attacked perhaps next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious
for making an attack without warning, and the question was
what should we do.
"The question was how much we should maneuver them into
the position of firing the first shot without allowing too
much danger to ourselves."
So the political and military leaders in Washington,
especially after they moved to choke off Japan's lifeline of
oil, knew an attack was coming. It was, after all, the
pretext they were hoping for to extend U.S. military and
economic control in Asia.
But no warning was given to the sailors at Pearl
Harbor.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS
:: SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page