Another Reason to Not Read the New York Times

The arrogance and irrationality I continue to see evidence of on the far left in the West, all in the name of enlightenment and intelligence, never fails to astound me.

Scott Johnson has a great column in the Weekly Standard about how many movie reviewers have criticized "The Great Raid," which is a great movie you should go see right now.

He focuses on New York Times critic Stephen Holden, who panned the movie for not having enough of a human element and because "its scenes of torture and murder also unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend."

So, let's take up those two complaints.

The first one is simple. Holden did not understand the human element because "The Great Raid" is about real men and real masculinity. The movie is true, first of all, and the characters do not stand out because they are all part of a team with a mission that is larger then themselves.

As the Post's Stephen Hunter (one of the few reviewers who did get it) wrote in his review:

By subcategory, it's what's called a "unit tribute," in which the organizational entity itself is the hero, not the individual members of it. This was a staple of immediate postwar moviemaking, all but gone now save for throwbacks like this one.

That, as much as anything, explains why the movie is essentially starless, with its cast drawn mostly from television or from film supporting roles. It is indeed strange to see a production as big as this, as expensive as this, as detailed as this, and as long as this (almost 2 1/2 hours) without a Brad or a George or a Matt or even a Harrison anywhere around to advance its fortunes on mag covers and talk shows. In fact, as a commercial proposition, the nearly anonymous nature of the cast may still prove to be a marketplace disaster.

But the lack of a star frees the screenwriters and the director, noir specialist John Dahl ("The Last Seduction" was his biggest), to tell the story as it happened and to put an emphasis on group ethics, teamwork, loyalty and stamina, not individual derring-do. George Clooney, a natural choice to play Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, the 6th's commanding officer, might never have let himself play it this way, but a much less powerful actor, a TV guy still looking for his place in the film world, Benjamin Bratt, has no choice. And thus we don't get an idealized commanding officer, but a man who's a commanding leader but maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer. His junior officers aren't sure they trust him (he hasn't been with the outfit that long). He is equal parts bombast and bravado, and seems to make decisions too quickly. There's a lot of eye-rolling when he gives pep talks, which is, everybody agrees, a little too often. But he has one saving grace: He's not bullheaded. And when he realizes he's made a wrong choice, he corrects it."

"The Great Raid" is a great film to show every 13-year old boy. And after he sees it, he should be sat down and told, "Those were heroes. Those were real men, unlike the self-important, self-promoting fools in the NBA and NFL who trumpet themselves as the greatest thing in the world. The solders portrayed in "The Great Raid" put their lives in danger and didn't ask for any recognition or special treatment; all they were looking for was an opportunity to prove themselves, and then get back to their wives and families.

Holden does not get this, and he says "the actual raid, when it finally happens in the movie's last 40 minutes, provides no visceral release; the prolonged, soggy fireworks display is devoid of suspense, excitement or human drama."

Holden apparently wishes for one of the U.S. soldiers to stop in the middle of the raid and deliver a speech to an injured Japanese soldier on how all men are equal and it's a shame that we have to have to break into your prison with these guns and all this shooting and nastiness, but these are our guys and you won't mind if we take them back home, will you. And the Japanese soldier would have an epiphany, and become blood brothers with the U.S. soldier, but not before imparting some ancient far east wisdom to the naive Yank.

But Holden is in liberal fantasy land, not reality. Hunter understands why "The Great Raid"s final scene is thrilling. It focuses on what happened and not how everybody was feeling when it happened.

This is war as track meet. The Rangers hit the installation at a dead run and veer to preselected, tactically advantageous firing positions. They simply beat the enemy to the good shooting sites and from them soak the place in automatic-weapons fire. It almost never works out so cleanly, but in this mission it did.

The second reason far-left liberals like Holden don't like "The Great Raid" is because, as Holden puts it, the movie's "scenes of torture and murder also unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend."

Johnson, in his Weekly Standard piece, nails Holden's empty rhetoric for the politically correct nonsense it is.

Contrary to Holden's implication, however, the brutalization of American soldiers by the Japanese has never been faithfully depicted in a big-budget Hollywood film. In fact this faithful depiction of the Japanese treatment of American POWs in the Pacific shows that the "uncomfortable stereotype" of Hollywood has failed to do justice to the depths of Japanese military depravity during World War II.

Johnson links to an outstanding column by David Gelernter from a year ago, about how the Japanese viewed POW's.

The Japanese army saw captive soldiers as cowards, lower than lice. If we forget this we dishonor the thousands who were tortured and murdered, and put ourselves in danger of believing the soul-corroding lie that all cultures are equally bad or good. Some Americans nowadays seem to think America's behavior during the war was worse than Japan's--we did intern many loyal Americans of Japanese descent. That was unforgivable--and unspeakably trivial compared to Japan's unique achievement, mass murder one atrocity at a time.

In "The Other Nuremberg," Arnold Brackman cites (for instance) "the case of Lucas Doctolero, crucified, nails driven through hands, feet and skull"; "the case of a blind woman who was dragged from her home November 17, 1943, stripped naked, and hanged"; "five Filipinos thrown into a latrine and buried alive." In the Japanese-occupied Philippines alone, at least 131,028 civilians and Allied prisoners of war were murdered. The Japanese committed crimes against Allied POWs and Asians that would be hard still, today, for a respectable newspaper even to describe. Mr. Brackman's 1987 book must be read by everyone who cares about World War II and its veterans, or the human race.

If you need any more evidence that Stephen Holden of the New York Times is full of crap, read these examples of Japanese atrocities during World War II. This is from a PBS website:

Many [American POW's in the Cabanatuan prison camp that were rescued in the movie] had been through the infamous [Bataan] death march -- where the Japanese army had marched an estimated 72,000 Americans and Filipinos 65 miles to San Fernando, Pampanga. Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers, estimates that 750 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos died on the march -- victims of starvation, disease, and random executions. (It should be noted that estimates vary widely. A study document put out by the Department of Veteran's Affairs puts the American deaths at 650 and Filipino deaths at 16,500. Forrest Johnson, author of Hour of Redemption, puts the U.S. deaths at 2,275 and Filipino deaths between 9,000-14,000.)

On the march, the men witnessed arbitrary executions of their fellow American and Filipino soldiers and of Filipino civilians who had offered food or water to the marchers. Bert Bank remembers:

One of the POWs had a ring on and the Japanese guard attempted to get the ring off. He couldn't get it off and he took a machete and cut the man's wrist off and when he did that, of course, the man was bleeding profusely. [I tried to help him] but when I looked back I saw a Japanese guard sticking a bayonet through his stomach.

On the second day, a fully pregnant Filipino woman threw some food out... this POW in front of me picked up the food and started eating it; and a Japanese guard came... and decapitated that POW... and then he went and cut the stomach out of the Filipino woman. She was screaming "Kill me, Kill me," and they wouldn't do it.

The POWs also experienced intense cruelty at the hands of their captors in Cabanatuan. All had witnessed hundreds of their compatriots die for lack of food and medicine. All had witnessed torture and summary executions. All had experienced Japanese brutality firsthand.

Former POW Richard Beck remembered:

It's a very sinking feeling to know that you are going to be abused for a long period of time, and that's exactly what it was, it was a long period of abuse -- starvation, beatings... Some people were shot for no reason at all, so you never knew how to assess the situation, whether you should try to lead a low profile. It was a case of never knowing how to cope.

The Kill-All Order
The Cabanatuan POWs' fear of becoming victims of another large scale massacre were well founded. After the war, it became clear that there existed a high command order -- issued from the War Ministry in Tokyo -- to kill all remaining POWs. This order, read in part:

Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, and whether it is accomplished by means of mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, or decapitation, dispose of them as the situation dictates. It is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.

Hell Ships
It also became clear after the war that the Japanese were responsible for horrific abuses of POWs aboard tankers leaving the Philippines and bound for Japan. These tankers became known as hell ships. The Japanese put masses of men in the holds of tankers and gave them little food, light, room or water. The men died at an alarming rate -- of suffocation, thirst, and madness. They also died of allied bombing , since the hell ships were not marked with a white cross, as specified by the Geneva Conventions, to indicate POWs were on board. The men who survived these tankers became slave laborers in Japanese mines and factories.

Extensive Barbarism
Throughout the Pacific theater, the Japanese treated POWs and civilians barbarically. Survivors of camps in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Burma and Laos all reported experiencing tremendous cruelty, torture, disease and starvation. It is an astounding fact that while POWs died at a rate of 1.2% in Germany, they died at a rate of 37% across the Pacific.