Editorial
Pearl Harbor movie should not stir hate

It would be easy to dismiss concerns about an "anti-Japanese" backlash in the wake of the new Pearl Harbor movie as so much pointless hand-wringing.

After all, it is just a movie. And surely everyone knows that today's Japanese Americans have nothing to do with what the militant nation of Japan did more than a half-century ago.

But those whose business it is to worry about such matters know better than to let their guard down. They know that senseless stereotyping and cheap emotions are never that far below the surface.

And while World War II was a long time ago, they don't have to go back that far. They can remember the murder of a young man of Chinese ancestry in Detroit several years ago when resentment against Japanese car manufacturers was at its height among U.S. auto workers.

They can remember just last year when physicist Wen Ho Lee came under suspicion not so much for his actions but because of terribly thoughtless assumptions based on his ethnicity.

So the concern about a possible backlash stirred by the emotions of this summer's movie is legitimate.

There has been some specific criticism of one scene in the movie, in which a Japanese American dentist is called up and quizzed about the presence of American ships in Pearl Harbor on the eve of the attack. That scene is based loosely on reality, although the film fails to show the follow-up fact that the dentist was investigated and found to be innocent of any involvement in espionage.

But that's not the fault of the movie. This is a movie about events of that day; it would be impossible to follow every story element to its final conclusion.

Perhaps the movie might have included an epilogue, that would have reminded viewers about the loyalty of the Japanese in Hawai'i, both at home and on the battlefield.

But again, that's not the job of the film-makers. It is our job to provide that epilogue, in ways large and small.

That's why we applaud the thinking of UH Professor Dennis Ogawa, who says this movie should be an occasion to reflect on the war years and to remember what happened to Japanese Americans back then. Rather than a cause for fear or concern, it should be an opportunity for education.

Toward that end, a special forum sponsored by the Japanese American Citizens League on that "other side of the story" will be held June 2 at the Japanese Cultural Center in Honolulu.

It is an important event, well worth attending. We all should remember the advice of George Santayana, who warned that "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."