Further thoughts on Pearl Harbour

Subject: RE: Further thoughts on Pearl Harbour
From: hesperis
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 09:16 PM

Interesting... most of the great spiritual masters have tried to teach us that all humans are equal.

And yet, in this economy of "rarity = value", lives seem to be considered the least valuable things on this Earth.

When will we understand?

Subject: Further thoughts on Pearl Harbour
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Jun 01 - 08:30 PM

Hello, people. For various personal reasons (which would make sense to some of you and no sense at all to others, depending on your beliefs)...I have a special connection with events in the WWII conflict between Japan and the USA (and its allies). Anything dealing with that conflict falls into sort of the nature of a sacrament to me, which is why I write a lot about it.

So...I did go out and see the Pearl Harbor movie. It has a number of both good and bad points...as a movie, and as a historical record....some accuracies, and some inaccuracies. I've seen worse attempts at recreating history. "Tora Tora Tora" was a better one.

The brief scenes on the Japanese side were pretty much fair and accurate.

I think they used a real Zero this time (by the looks of it. There are a couple of flyable ones around now.) Looked like a late model Zero (1943-45) to me, and had the dark green topsides typical of late model Zeros. The ones at Pearl were a very light gray all over, except for the black cowling. The Kates and Vals were the usual modified training planes...looked pretty good except the wings on the Vals are all wrong...but most of you, I assume, don't care. Anyway, it's understandable, because it would cost way too much to do up totally accurate and flyable Kates and Vals at this point.

The love story was typical Hollywood tripe...what they think sells movies...and they may be right about that for all I know...or care.

There were some genuinely moving scenes showing the suffering of the victims both during and after the attack.

There was the usual stupid offscreen orchestra, playing frantically throughout the battle scenes. I consider this to be an odd cultural habit. It's a pity the Japanese couldn't have spared a trio of Zeros to strafe that damned orchestra and shut them up (I'm being sarcastic)...there was enough normal battle noise to entirely suffice for providing excitement, after all.

For me the most important thing about the "Pearl Harbor" film is this. It perpetuates a huge cultural lie that the human race has been teaching its children for many centuries.

The lie? That "there has always been war and there will always be war" (see the Jackson Browne song lyrics on the "Lives In The Balance" album). That lie? That war is noble, courageous, and glorious. That we must always prepare for yet another war. That we will win because we are right, and the other guys are wrong. That humanity is not a single family. That we will always be divided against one another, and that only the strong shall survive.

These are the cultural lies that sent a generation of young Japanese to devastate and rape China. These are the lies that sent those magnificently courageous young Japanese to massacre magnificently courageous young Americans at Pearl Harbour. These are the lies that later built the atomic bomb and dropped it on Hiroshima, and that turned Dresden into a sea of fire. These are the lies that presently starve and impoverish half the world while we build more cruise missiles and stealth bombers.

These are not lies that little children believe, until they've been indoctrinated for a while by their schools and their elders.

The truth is, it is human beings who are noble, courageous, and glorious...not war. War is just a gigantic tragedy, and an unnecessary one...in which brave human beings sacrifice themselves...to a BIG LIE.

My father was in WWII. He drove a tank. He saw many friends killed in front of his eyes. He killed young German men who were caught up in the same huge events as he was, and who had essentially the same feelings he did. Like him, they hoped to survive the war, and have normal lives afterward. Some made it, and some didn't. He remembers it now (the war) as the most colossally wasteful use of human energy and ingenuity that he ever saw in his life.

There's a damned silly scene in that movie where Jimmy Doolittle waxes poetic about the dedication of the young American pilot volunteers...and how he knows NOW that the USA will win the war...because of that!!! What a piece of patriotic melodrama. What a lie. That is the system, busily indoctrinating yet another generation of youngsters in the false mythology of war and its glory.

Doolittle should have been there in 1944 and '45 to see whole squadrons of young Japanese pilots volunteer without hesitation to fly kamikaze missions and hurl themselves into certain flaming death. Not one refused to go that I ever heard of.

They were just like the Doolittle raiders stepping forward. Just like the men at the Alamo. Same deal. They too, had been brought up on the same damned mythology of war. They too gave themselves up to the war machine, which chewed them up, spat them out, and went on to devour more precious lives.

The machine doesn't have a heart or a soul, but it consumes human lives wholesale to keep itself going. It uses our courage, our strength, our endurance, our brilliance, our patriotism, and our dedication...all in service of a LIE...and then it pins a medal, a worthless trinket, on our chest or sends a letter home to our grieving families...and the lie goes on and on.

America won that war not because of any surplus of human courage...courage was commonplace on ALL sides...but because America's gross national product was big enough to overwhelm both Germany and Japan, and it was just a matter of time once the shooting started.

The movie showed the tragedy of war all right...and yet it repeated the usual Big Lies at the very same time.

I believe we can do better than that. One World, One Humanity. If not now, when?

I honor the fallen and the survivors on both sides. I hope we learn to never, never do it again.

- Little Hawk