THE
FEAR FACTOR
The
problem is fear. Floyd Mori, president of the Japanese
American Citizens League (JACL), thinks the movie "could
fuel hatred of Americans of Asian descent," according
to news reports, "and he said Japanese groups around
the United States have heightened security measures out
of fear of a backlash." While this may seem like the usual
victimological wallowing, I assure you it is not. We are
talking about a country where a young Chinese-American
man, Vincent Chin, was beaten
to death with a baseball bat by thugs who thought
he was Japanese – it was, to their "minds" (and I
use the term loosely), payback time for all those "American
jobs" taken by Japanese auto makers during the eighties.
IN
COLD BLOOD
As
they beat their victim senseless, one of these monsters
was heard to yell out: "It's because of you mother******s,
that we're out of work!" America is chock full of
nutballs like that, who, rather than blame themselves
for their life-failure, fixate on some random person who
just happens to get in their path. And if ignorance of
basic economics can rationalize murder in some idiot's
mind – there are no jobs that are specifically
"American," or Japanese, for that matter – then ignorance
of history can be even deadlier: Can't you just imagine
some crazed cretin shouting "You killed my [father-brother-uncle-whatever]
at Pearl Harbor!" as he cut down his victim in cold blood?
OH,
GET OVER YOURSELF, JUSTIN
Oh,
c'mon, Justin – you're thinking – aren't
you being just a little too . . . nervous? Butch
it up! After all, it's not very likely that such a thing
will occur: besides, the knowledge that they would get
the book thrown at them deters would-be baseball-bat-wielding
thugs from going on a rampage. There's only one problem
with such a calm and reasoned argument: Vincent Chin's
killers didn't get the book thrown at them. Instead, it
seems, the judge re-wrote the book before gift-wrapping
and delivering it on a silver platter. On March 16, 1983,
Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles S. Kaufman didn't even
bother hearing arguments from the prosecutor before he
sentenced these two murderers to three years probation
and fined each of them $3,000 plus $780 in fees. Ah, but
don't worry: both of these racist cretins were allowed
to "repay their debt" to society in monthly payments of
$125. "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail,"
said Judge Kaufman, and who can contradict him? After
all, if you're living in a sick society, where violent
criminals are barely slapped on the wrist, then he's right,
these aren't the kind of men you send to jail.
I'M
READY TO ROCK
Can
you see some war-maddened (or, more likely, media-maddened)
loser actually paying for a heinous crime such as the
Chin murder with his life? Since we only execute right-wing
extremists, to avoid the death penalty for sure all a
murderer has to do is shove a well-thumbed copy of The
Nation into his back pocket, and then take out his
victim. Call me nervous Nellie, but here's my question:
where's the deterrence? And don't tell me jail
is a deterrent. Some truly mad human beings long for life
imprisonment like warriors of Allah long for Paradise:
in both cases the price of entry being a willingness to
commit some catalytic act of violence regardless of the
known consequences. I don't know about you guys, but I'm
going to show up at that theater cocked, locked, and ready
to rock. . . .
SWEET
IRONY
JACL's
Mori is understandably upset at one particular aspect
of Pearl Harbor's plot development: a Japanese-American
dentist who is depicted in the movie as a spy: "The movie
infers that a Japanese American helps the enemy which
is totally false," says Mori. "We want the inaccuracy
deleted or for Disney to take full responsibility for
any violence or anti-Asian sentiment resulting from it."
Oh, the irony of it all is almost too much to bear, for
there was, indeed, a Japanese spy involved in the
attack on Pearl Harbor – that is, a Japanese-Japanese
spy, and, what's more, the US government knew all about
him. Indeed, their intelligence regarding his movements
and intentions, as Robert Stinnett reveals in his blockbuster
book, Day
of Deceit, is just one more reason why we can
be certain that Franklin Roosevelt knew where and
when the Japanese would strike.
SPY
STORY
Takeo
Yoshikawa was a 27-year-old graduate of Japan's naval
academy who, in the closing months of 1941, was dispatched
to Oahu to spy on the Pacific Fleet. He was given the
cover name of Tadashi Morimura, and assigned to the Japanese
consulate in Honolulu. This immediately aroused the suspicions
of Western intelligence agencies, who could find no Morimura
in the diplomatic registries. Now, the Americans, you
remember, had cracked the Japanese code, and were reading
intercepted diplomatic and military messages: Morimura
was tracked all the way to Honolulu and met on his arrival
by at least one undercover agent. Documents uncovered
by Stinnett through the Freedom of Information Act reveal
that every move made by Morimura in Hawaii was observed,
and his frequent and detailed reports to his superiors
in Tokyo were known not only to the Navy, but were sent
to Washington by priority dispatch.
HOOVER
HUSHED
It
was clear from the content of the spy messages that the
Japanese were scouting out Pearl Harbor as a target. Yet
when word got out about the consul's extracurricular activities,
the US government denied it in public, and privately tried
to quash the whole matter by handing the investigation
over to the Navy. Not only local authorities but also
the FBI was cut out of the loop, and J. Edgar Hoover was
furious: he pressured FDR to arrest or deport the spies,
but Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle made the
argument that to expel them would compromise America's
most closely guarded secret: that the Japanese code had
been broken. The whole Morimura affair was hushed up,
and the investigation walled off: the Japanese spy was
allowed to proceed to phase two of his mission.
OUT
OF THE LOOP
One
would think that, starting on August 21, 1941, when Morimura
began to send Tokyo information used to map a grid for
a bomber attack on Pearl Harbor naval base, alarm bells
would have gone off somewhere. Wiretapped seven
ways from Sunday, his every spy message intercepted and
read, Morimura and his pals at the consulate engaged in
espionage by day, and caroused in the bars at night, their
every movement tracked, recorded, and documented by American
officials at the highest level. And it wasn't only the
FBI that was kept out of the loop: Admiral Husband E.
Kimmel, and General Walter Short, charged with the security
of the naval base, were also kept in the dark. On December
2, Morimura sent Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, the leader
of the air attack, the following message, which Fuchida
received aboard the Akagi:
"No changes observed by afternoon of 2 December. So far
they do not seem to have been alerted. Shore leave as
usual."
SURPRISE,
SURPRISE
Yet
the spies were not arrested, nor were Kimmel and Short
informed of the increasingly obvious Japanese plan to
bomb Pearl Harbor, not even when, on Saturday, December
6, Morimura explicitly informed his superiors that the
Hawaiian islands were vulnerable to a surprise attack:
"There are no barrage balloons up and there is an opportunity
left for a surprise attack against these places," Morimura
wrote.
HIDDEN
EVIDENCE
This
message was almost immediately intercepted at San Francisco's
Presidio military base and forwarded to Washington. But
somehow, back at Pearl Harbor, the man responsible for
forwarding it to Admiral Kimmel, Joseph
J. Rochefort, head of naval intelligence in the region,
never got around to decoding this particular message,
nor any of the other spy messages in his bin during this
crucial period: but plenty of routine business messages
which had been intercepted were decoded. Admiral
Kimmel never saw this message, nor any of the spy messages
that US intelligence had access to. Rochefort deliberately
hid evidence from later investigators indicating that
he had sat on this vitally important information.
OOPS!
SORRY ABOUT THAT
It
was only after the attack that Rochefort got around
to decoding and translating Morimura's December 6 message,
and, although there were no errors in any of the
other translations, somehow there were no less than 88
decryption errors in the transcription of this particular
message. This matter wasn't gone into until 1945, when
the decrypter was briefly brought before a board of inquiry:
Navy Lieutenant Joseph Finnegan could not explain how,
in this one instance, his abilities had deserted him so
completely.
HOLLYWOOD
AIRHEAD
There
the matter was dropped, and it laid there for 50 years
until Stinnett uncovered it – yet director Michael
Bay, ignorant Hollywood airhead that he is, arrogantly
dismisses all such talk as "b*llsh*t," while screenwriter
Randall Wallace tells
an interviewer what inspired him to write the Pearl
Harbor script:
"When
I look at the story, my emotions get stirred up and I
get fascinated by certain elements. The first being that
America was isolationistic. It's such a surprise for somebody
who grew up in the post-war era to realize that before
Pearl Harbor, America didn't want any part of the war.
The other is that of America's response to Pearl Harbor.
The event itself is one thing and it's fairly straightforward.
We were there; we weren't expecting an attack; the Japanese
attacked us and achieved pretty much total surprise and
killed a whole lot of people. But what makes that important
was America's response."
CAN
YOU IMAGINE?
Yes,
it's so hard to imagine how life must have been
back in America's pre-imperial era, in those low-tech
days before the media could whip us up into a war frenzy
within hours. Why – can you believe it –
but in that horse-and-buggy era, no one thought to call
soldiers "peacekeepers"! To these "isolationistic" Neanderthals,
war was hell instead of a humanitarian intervention, and
they didn't want any part of Europe's endless quarrels.
What primitives!
PRETTY
MUCH TOTAL
In
Hollyweird, "pretty much total surprise" is pretty much
all you'll get in the way of an admission that this whole
movie is based on a lie. For pretty much everybody but
the President of the United States and his immediate advisors
were kept in the dark – in effect, lied to –
and the whole thing was covered up for 50 years. Now,
with this movie, and the flood of "patriotic" pro-war
pro-FDR propaganda being churned out on this central theme
of the all-around goodness of World War II, they
hope to cover up the truth about Pearl Harbor for another
50 years.
TRUTH,
LIES, AND ART
What
strikes me, in the end, is that the truth about Pearl
Harbor is far more interesting than the rather pedestrian
little fable dreamed up Bay, Wallace, and all the "creative"
talent the biggest budget in Hollywood history could buy.
The truth is a dramatic and fascinating story, involving
all the most interesting human predicaments and emotions:
A desperate President puts one over on the nation, and
kills a few thousand of his own sailors and soldiers,
all in the name of a greater good – getting us into
the war. This is a far more interesting – and realistic
– tale than the rather prosaic blood-drenched "love
story" we have come to expect as standard Hollywood product.
The real story of Pearl Harbor, alas, is more colorful
and convincing than all the lies Hollywood can muster.
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