An amusing story re. Dad related in an email from my cousin Bob Williams of Anoka:
I remember your dad coming to our Glenwood (MN) house in his uniform when my brother and I were young. I was two and Tom was about eight. When we saw him at the door, one of us yelled "Bum!" and slammed the door shut. We had a hobo jungle nearby in those days and the hobos often came to the door to beg for food. My mom finally let him in.
Mad Magazine did a satire on WWII movies once, suggesting that as the years advance after a major war, "the enemy" becomes less sinister and more relatable. The enemy seems to command empathy. Perhaps it's in the spirit of "we're all just pawns on a chessboard, really." The sinister strings just got pulled by some mysterious malevolent souls who weaved their way into power.
The impulse to humanize our enemies is understandable somewhat. We do not relish having our thoughts buried in unbridled hatred, the kind of hatred that dehumanizes the foe. Dehumanizing is fine at the time of war because it makes the act of killing less painful. In WWII we saw terms like "Japs" and "Nips" trotted out for the Japanese. When the war was still fresh in our memory, such language was even palatable in war-based entertainment. Oh yes we were entertained by all the war flicks. And on TV too!
A friend tells me there's a reason we only rarely see "McHale's Navy" re-runs. The show which really followed the template for mainstream TV comedy included references to the "Nips." While such talk hardly raised eyebrows in an earlier time, the hatred seems steadily less palatable as time goes on. I suppose Rodney King articulated the spirit when he said "Why can't we all just get along?" Indeed we cannot.
My father was in the "Greatest Generation" which itself is kind of a fable. One day he was in music education and then very rapidly had to transition to Naval officer. He was in charge of a crew that guarded a merchant chip, an oil tanker. When he designed our home in the early 1960s, he chose an art print for display that had a profile of a ship in the distance, a ship that he said looked just like the ship he served.
Toward war's end he was transferred to the USS Appalachian. Our family was invited to their reunions through the years but we did not attend. The organization mailed us a commemorative ashtray with the name of the vessel. A commemorative ashtray! Now there's a dated memento. Ashtrays were an expected part of our surroundings when the WWII generation was in its prime.
I have read that cigarette companies in the war years made their product available for free to servicemen. Shall I even state the obvious suspicion that a motive was to get the guys "hooked?" I don't remember my father ever smoking cigarettes although I recall some cigars and pipe-smoking.
He recalled his war experiences only occasionally. He did not get involved in service organizations like the VFW and Legion in town, and I wish he had. Perhaps I could have talked him into it, had I been inclined that way.
My father had vivid memories of what Japan was like in the ashes of the aftermath of conflict. He shared as follows for a local newspaper profile of him once:
In November 1945, my ship stopped in Japan for a day. I took the electric train into Tokyo. For 20 miles, between the port and the city, there were no houses standing. But there were thousands of tepees made of corrugated tin, with a column of smoke rising from each one. I took a long walk through Tokyo in the dark. In every doorway, there were homeless families - mothers, fathers and children, sleeping in the entrances.
A scene from movie "Emperor"
All this re-enters my mind now that I have watched "Emperor," the 2012 movie about the decision on whether to execute Japan's emperor. I don't recall the movie getting well-known. It wasn't about fighting toward victory because victory was already done. Any suspense there is disposed of.
The movie shows us scenes of Tokyo in rubble just like my late father Ralph described. He was struck by the humbled demeanor of the Japanese people - apparently no risk for our servicemen to circulate. So, any belligerent inclination was virtually crushed.
Perhaps it would be good to read about the "rape of Nanking" before you watch this movie. I think your perspective would be put on a more realistic level. A mere handful of militarists could not have done all the heinous things that the Empire of Japan did. Mankind's dark forces can come out all too easily. Mad Magazine did a service when showing how a touch of revisionist history, to make the enemy seem "relatable" as human beings - and after all we all have weaknesses - comes through after the passage of time.
We have emotional distance from the grotesque reality of war. Most of us have befriended Asian people. It would seem perverse to call them "Nips." But actor Ernest Borgnine certainly did in "McHale's Navy."
The U.S. had to kill indiscriminately at the end of the war via the A-bombs. Why be so hard on the Japan civilian population? Well, I suppose because we saw the Japan menace as going far beyond a simple group of "militarists." The movie "Emperor" needed an obvious villain to hang out there and we see this in unsubtle terms: "Tojo." Oh he was a real villain. First he's shown in the cowardly act of trying to take his own life, which he fails at. His demeanor is totally sullen as he hardly says a word, and then he is hanged.
We can dust off our hands after that and proclaim "justice," right? The problem I have is that after that, the remaining suspicious characters in Japan's power structure are treated way too much as the "complicated human beings" that Hollywood likes to dispense on us. Again, a reminder about the Mad Magazine satire (from the 1960s): The satire concluded with a prediction of how the Japanese belligerents would be portrayed by Hollywood many years hence. The typical Imperial officer would "look like Tab Hunter only he'll have much straighter teeth," the cartoon panel said.
Satirists cut to the chase so nicely. Similarly, the German people were increasingly coming across as having been manipulated by "Nazi masters." Again, we all have German friends today, right? Let's gloss over a few things.
The Tommy Lee Jones portrayal is, shall we say, pretty superficial. The biggest takeaway is that the general was a vain and showboating person who liked to delegate. My father said that when MacArthur ran for president, he flopped because the American people feared he would just get us in another big war. Memorial Day speeches aside, we just don't need wars. My father was so lucky to survive.
Remembering those who fell
A Stevens County native named Floyd Lange was not so fortunate in the Pacific war. The war's end was so close when the USS Luce on which Lange served, was struck and sunk by a Kamikaze plane. The Lange family is interwoven with the Kramers and when I finally saw a picture of Floyd, he struck me as fitting right in with the Kramer boys of Morris in my childhood.
So tragic for a life to end that way. So much better to avoid war and make unnecessary the Memorial Day speeches. I have always had mixed feelings about Memorial Day and Veterans Day speeches. They remind us of conflict too much and could stoke jingoism. Obviously we all remember the sacrifices of people like Floyd Lange. We honor the service of my father who went on to continue a distinguished music career after the war. He founded the music department at our University of Minnesota-Morris.
The campus sits sadly idle now because of the pandemic of 2020.
Tommy Lee Jones was only the second most important actor in "Emperor." When first seeing Matthew Fox in the beginning scenes, I thought to myself "I've seen this guy in another movie." Doesn't it drive you nuts when you have this feeling and you cannot immediately pin down the other movie? What a sigh of relief when it comes back to you. Fox was the assistant coach in the movie "We Are Marshall." His character had to be talked into returning to the football team after the fatal plane accident.
In "Emperor," Fox plays Brigadier General Bonner Fellers who answers to MacArthur. There is a sub-plot with a love interest, a Japanese girl, and it reminds me of a similar sub-plot in the 1960s movie "Midway." A review states that the romance is "cliched" but hey, aren't all romances (LOL)?
I suppose Fox does OK in his role. To the extent that the U.S. was merciful toward certain Japanese leaders like the emperor, I would say it was only because it was in U.S. interests. We had to keep Japan's morale somewhat intact lest the "Communists" moved in. The Commies were the ultimate boogeymen through my growing-up years. They were cited to defend the Vietnam war. Absolutely hellish and tragic.
"Emperor" is worth seeing. It will not enter the ranks of war classics. I am more likely to remember Tommy Lee Jones from other roles. Gregory Peck is still MacArthur in my mind.
 | |
Dad had mustache when in Navy! |
No comments:
Post a Comment