'Pearl Harbor': The Movie

'Pearl Harbor': The Movie

July 19, 2001

STRAIGHT TALK
By Muriel Sluyter

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

The revision of history in the movie, "Pearl Harbor," has apparently offended a lot of Americans, because it is taking a beating at the box office. The problem? There are still too many veterans of W.W.II around, and they don’t take kindly to writers playing fast and loose with the facts. Too many of them held buddies in their arms while those friends died. Too many liberated Japanese prison camps, where Americans had been tortured and starved.

So, why was the movie written as it was? Japan is a big market, and the producer wanted those dollars, so he didn’t want to offend Japanese viewers. Besides, that is the politically correct version of W.W.II, and since young Americans have also been taught false versions of history, they don’t know any better anyway.

Young Japanese are taught that Japan was an innocent victim of American aggression in W.W.II, and their only reason for fighting was to defend themselves. We think that is dumb, since it is so astonishingly untrue, but a few years ago, our own Smithsonian Institution put on a display of W.W.II artifacts and said openly that Japan was a benevolent nation that had only fought to defend its unique culture.

Are young Japanese taught that their country attacked China between 1894 and 1895 and took Taiwan and the Pescadores; fought Russia in 1904-05 and took part of Sakhalin Island and Port Arthur and took over the lease of the Kwantung Peninsula, annexed Korea in 1910 and enslaved the people? Probably not.

Do they now of Japan’s seizure of Manchuria in 1931, or their incredibly vicious slaughter of Chinese civilians and capture of vast portions of China in 1937? How about their 1939 seizure of Hainan Island, where our reconnaissance plane was forced to land a few months ago? Or their taking of resource-rich Indochina? How about their massacre of 250,000 innocent Chinese civilians in response to our bombing of Tokyo in the first year of the war? Do the Japanese people know about those things? Probably not.

How about young Americans? Do they know? Probably not. Why? Because American education has changed, and our young people are no longer taught real history.

Do they now that, from George Washington on down through our history, our leaders have openly said that we have been preserved as a nation only by the grace and protection of God? That Abraham Lincoln said precisely that, in so many words?

Do they know our fighting men fought under the most impossible conditions in W.W.II? We had won only one engagement in the Pacific, the battle of the Coral Sea, and should have been wiped off the watery map of Midway Island in 1942. We were overwhelmingly outgunned. Our planes were mostly old and clumsy. The men called the Buffaloes "flying coffins," and nicknamed the ancient Vindicators "Vibrators," for the obvious reason. But when the battle was over, the Japanese had lost four carriers, one heavy cruiser, over 250 planes and more than 2,000 men. We had lost one carrier, one destroyer, over 150 planes and more than 300 men.

Why did we win? Bob Murrish, W.W.II Navy veteran, says it all: "Not only did He have a hand in saving our country, He saved my life when our light cruiser, the Helena, was sunk. In fact. He had His whole arm in the battle that night."

Do our young people know that? Probably not, and unless someone has the courage to teach them the truth, they will know only what they learn from the movies.