Philip Terzian
While neither the horse-faced Mr. Affleck nor the luminous Miss Beckinsale
are exactly top draws at the box office, the movie employs the same sort of
special effects -- that is, big ships listing violently before sinking
underwater -- that made Titanic such a huge success four
years ago.
If, however, you tend to cringe at the way Hollywood treats, or rather
mistreats, history, you might be well advised to stay away from this one. As
with nearly every historical epic ever produced on film -- from Cecil B.
DeMille to Oliver Stone -- Pearl Harbor is full of laughable
howlers, startling solecisms, misconceptions, rank inventions and
distortions. And for people like you, no star-crossed love affair or
computer-generated graphic can compensate for the pain of seeing truth get
yanked through the wringer.
Sometimes it's funny. When courageous Ben Affleck is leaving for
England, clasping a sorrowful Kate Beckinsale in his arms, their emotional
parting takes place at New York's Grand Central Station -- where,
presumably, Mr. Affleck catches a trans-Atlantic train for London. U.S. Army
nurses in Hawaii are depicted as lusty refugees from the Victoria's Secret
catalogue, if such a thing had existed in the early 1940s. Then there's
ignorance. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is played by Jon Voigt under several
layers of plastic, is shown discussing with White House aides his
predicament as a paraplegic -- something the real FDR would never have done
-- and then displaying courage by rising defiantly (and unassisted) from his
wheelchair -- something the real FDR was unable to do.
More troubling, however, is the movie's treatment of the politics of
World War II. Pearl Harbor is produced by The Disney
Company, which does a lot of business in Japan, and as every schoolboy
knows, it was the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor. The Disney Company wants
to continue earning profits in Japan, and does not wish to offend what it
perceives to be Japanese sensibilities. So the question of why the Japanese
staged a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor -- in the middle of diplomatic
negotiations with the United States -- is treated in, shall we say, cavalier
fashion.
To its credit, the movie does not fall for the isolationist conspiracy
theories that, to this day, argue that FDR concealed knowledge of the attack
from the military commanders in Hawaii, thereby pushing a reluctant United
States into war. But that is probably because the producers and writers are
unaware of such arguments. Instead, the Japanese are shown to be reluctant
warriors, sadly striking back at America because the United States had
embargoed oil shipments to Japan, reducing its reserves to 18 months. The
implication is that while the attack on Pearl Harbor was unexpected, and
disastrous, it was not entirely unprovoked, or undeserved.
What is left unsaid in Pearl Harbor is the fact that oil
shipments to Japan were cut off because, for the previous decade, Imperial
Japan had been marauding Asia, invading China and Southeast Asia, enslaving
Koreans, and perpetrating massacres and atrocities throughout the region. If
The Disney Company worries about offending its business partner Japan Inc.,
it should ask Japan's Asian neighbors what they think about Japanese
behavior during World War II.
One curious irony here is that, while contemporary Germany is just as
much a friend and ally of America as Japan, the feelings of the Germans are
seldom spared in portrayals of the Germans of World War II on stage and
screen. When was the last time Hitler was shown invading Poland, more in
sorrow than anger, because the Poles were mistreating ethnic Germans? Are
our wartime allies the British deeply hurt when we gripe about George III,
and set off fireworks on the Fourth of July?
Of course not. And the greatest irony is that the Japanese themselves
are fully capable of facing the past. It is not today's democratic Japan
that made war on China, or bombed Pearl Harbor, but a military dictatorship
that bears no more resemblance to modern Japan than the Federal Republic of
Germany looks like the Third Reich.
The idea that there was anything like moral equivalence between the
United States and Japan in 1941 is not just misleading, but repugnant.
Moreover, it insults the memory of those who died to defend the United
States against tyranny, and those Japanese who labored so successfully to
transform their country in the postwar
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
If your idea of pleasure is watching Ben Affleck win
the Battle of Britain, and then magically appear (in American uniform) at
Pearl Harbor, just in time to woo Kate Beckinsale on Dec. 7, 1941, then this
season's would-be blockbuster, Pearl Harbor, is for you. 
JWR contributor Philip Terzian is associate editor of The Providence Journal.
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