[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from Rubin Reports.]

This year, my son -- who is attending the fourth grade at an American public school -- has been subjected to an unending barrage of anti-Americanism, especially around the issue of racism and to large extent for some reason related disproportionately to alleged American racism toward the Japanese in World War Two. Literally not a single positive word has been spoken about America during the entire school year.

At the same time, I have been watching a number of American films about the Pacific theatre during World War Two, not seeking them out but merely because they have been shown on television. The controversy over Tom Hanks's statement and his new series on that war has added to the interest.

One thing very clear to me is that American films about the Pacific theatre are remarkably free of vicious or "racialist" incitement. On the contrary, it is remarkable how restrained they are. In many films that focus on combat -- say, "Wake Island" or "They Were Expendable," among the first wartime films, there is virtually no emphasis on demonizing the Japanese. They are an enemy who is being fought and, if possible, killed, but there is no racialist message.

In another early film, "Bataan," (1943) about Americans and Filipinos fighting in the early days of the war, the two allies are seen interacting on a basis of equality. (Remember that Japanese are not a race and World War Two stereotypes of other Asians -- especially Filipinos and Chinese -- are quite sympathetic. About the only characterization of the Japanese in this film is that while hated as foes the American soldiers describe them as very brave and skilled soldiers.

In "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo," about the first American air raid on Japan, there is one remarkable exchange in which a flier says Americans should not be prejudiced against the Japanese people as a whole. He says that his family employed a Japanese gardener who was a pretty nice guy. While today this might be portrayed as patronizing, the context was that Japanese were human beings like everyone else.

Incidentally, when the plane crews crash land in China, their lives are saved by heroic Chinese, shown as defending themselves against Japanese aggression. They risk their own lives and give of their few possessions to help save Americans. Asians are thus portrayed very favorably.

If you want to see a film that expresses the American self-conception at the time, try The Human Comedy (1943), written by the Armenian-American Californian William Saroyan. Many now consider the film embarrassingly sentimental and corny but it is also quite noble. Mickey Rooney plays a boy working at the telegraph office in a California town who watches his brother go off to war.

But he has to deliver the telegraphs telling families that their sons are killed, wounded, or missing. There is a moving scene when he has to do so to a Mexican-American family and a remarkable one when his boss is driving through the park past all the different ethnic versions of July 4 celebrations, pointing them out as examples of American pluralism. It's something that should be mandatory viewing for public school students today to know that their ancestors weren't neo-Nazi skinheads.

Especially interesting is the 1944 film, "Destination Tokyo," made in 1944, it's about an American submarine crew given a mission to sneak into Tokyo Bay with a Japanese-speaking officer to gather intelligence for the raid mentioned above. So how did this wartime movie, chosen pretty much at random, deal with the Japanese? Is it an example of American racism and chauvinism, like schoolkids are taught nowadays?

There are two scenes in which the Japanese come up and they are both pretty remarkable. Remember the war was at its height when this film was made. In the first scene, the submarine is passing through the Aleutian islands when it is attacked by two Japanese planes. It shoots both of them down -- perhaps an unreasonable amount of heroics but necessary to the plot (the mission cannot succeed if they are spotted.)

One of the Japanese pilots parachutes and the captain orders him to be taken aboard for questioning. I think this is most unrealistic since they couldn't go on a long mission with a Japanese soldier on board. If it had happened in real life, they probably would have done nothing and he would have been dead in those icy waters within a few minutes.

One of the most popular sailors tries to pull him aboard but the pilot stabs him to death and is immediately machinegunned. This is not unrealistic since Japanese soldiers -- especially officers -- rarely surrendered and did use such tactics on many occasions.

At any rate, this could have been the basis for a real hate-Japanese diatribe. Instead, though, the speeches made by a crew member and by the captain (played by Cary Grant) to the crew are simply amazing in comparison to what contemporary schools are teaching in many states.

One crewman, who has earlier made clear his ethnic pride in being a Greek, doesn't attend the funeral. The other crew members are angry at him but he explains that he doesn't think he's earned the right to do so because he hasn't made any contribution to avenging those already dead. Back in Greece, he recounts, his uncle, a professor, was killed by the Nazis:

"Because he had brains. Because everybody's got to be their slave and those who won't, like my uncle, they kill....So I don't forget my uncle. I read where an American flier gets killed and I think of my uncle. I see pictures of little Chinese kids getting bombed and I think of my uncle. I hear about a Russian guerrilla getting hanged and I think about my uncle. And I see Mike lying in there dead from a Jap killer and I think of my uncle."

Again, many would see this as contrived and mawkish but it is rather internationalist in tone, including the Chinese who, like the Japanese, are Asians. Not a bad way, though, to explain the war in both terms of freedom and human connections.

The captain says:

"Mike was with me on my first patrol. I was his friend. I know his family....I remember Mike's pride when he bought his first roller skates for his little five-year-old boy....Well that Jap got a present, too, when he was five, a dagger....The Japs have a ceremony that goes with it....At thirteen he can put a machine-gun together blindfolded . So as I see it, that Jap was started on the road twenty years ago to putting a knife in Mike's back. There are lots of Mikes dying now, and lots more will die. Until we put a stop to a system that puts knives in the hands of five-year-old children. You know, if Mike were here to put it into words right now that's just about what he died for: more roller-skates in this world, including some for the next generation of Japanese kids because that's the kind of a man Mike was."

This isn't a sophisticated lecture on the samurai class and no doubt a bad-intentioned graduate student today could have a field day twisting it. But what does the speech say? That a terrible system has created people who act in a certain way and that this system must be democratized, not only for America's sake but for that of the Japanese as well so that they can enjoy a better life.

. it is sort of a remarkable prophecy of the post-war American occupation policy and the successful transformation of Japan. Such sentiments are the opposite of a racist interpretation, which sees such behavior as innate and certainly doesn't care about the lives of the enemy. One can't help thinking of a system which teaches children to become suicide bombers today, to hate and to want to commit genocide

In a later scene, the captain asks the intelligence officer about Japanese society. While the conversation may not be accurate, it is also explicitly anti-racialist. The officer explains that there was a democratic movement in Japan but the leaders were assassinated. The people have no power and are downtrodden, "No unions, no free press, nothing." Most of them "believe what they're told. They've been sold a swindle and they accept it." it is explained that Japanese people live in appalling poverty in a way that stirs sympathy for them and that "females are useful there only to work and have children."

Again, it is not that the Japanese are innately evil or inferior but merely that the people have been deprived of rights. They, too, are victims. Note also that the oppression of women is an important issue, like today, in the mix which is said to make for an authoritarian society.

Of course, this is the Hollywood version of events, not what was going on in the field. But that's precisely the point. This was the kind of thing Americans in their millions were being told: hate the Japanese as an enemy but not as a people or as a "race." And, again, a very clear differentiation was being made among Muslims.

I'm not saying that these films are great art necessarily or accurate about how the war was fought. But inasmuch as there is an ideological statement, it is something Americans today can be proud of and it is also evidence that the rewriting of American history into a series of hate crimes is a lie.