thedrifter
02-19-09, 07:35 AM
February 19, 2009
Historic page's slur prompts dispute
By Will Higgins
The Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS -- Tom Mattice said he was trying to promote a "healing environment" when he removed the old, yellowing newspaper page from a hallway at the Veterans Affairs hospital.
But in doing so, the hospital director opened an old wound -- and spurred debate about political correctness, free speech and how to be true to history without being offensive.
At issue is a framed front page from an August 1945 Indianapolis Times. The headline: "Japs Surrender."
Mattice, director of the Roudebush VA Medical Center, said a new employee was offended by the term "Japs," a commonly used word during World War II.
So Mattice took down the page, tucking it away in the center's offices.
That decision has riled a group of retired Marines who call it whitewashing history and akin to offering an apology that isn't due. They are campaigning to have the page put back on the wall, where it had hung alongside other World War II memorabilia for more than a decade.
Said Ronald "Bud" Albright, who as commandant of the local Marine Corps League chapter has started a letter-writing campaign among veterans nationwide: "We feel it's a slap in the face of the U.S. military. That newspaper is history, part of United States history."
Such disputes are not rare. Last month, Indianapolis International Airport altered a photo exhibit after fielding a complaint over a provocative view of Israel and American Jews expressed in one of the captions.
In 2002, some students at Indiana University fought for the removal of a Thomas Hart Benton mural depicting Indiana history in Woodburn Hall because it showed Ku Klux Klansmen. The mural stayed.
The term "Jap" is emblematic of the racial prejudice that was promoted during World War II.
"A precondition to fight a war is to dehumanize the enemy," said Guy Burgess, a co-director of the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado. "If you think of them as humans, you can't do the things war compels you to do."
In the case of Japan and Germany, Burgess said, it was an easy sell. "There was lots of real evil in the Axis countries," he said.
But that was more than 60 years ago. The Japanese, as well as the Germans and the Italians, have been allies ever since.
"The war's over, but if you're going to tell it like it is, then you tell it like it was, and that's the way it was, just like that newspaper said it," said John Gromosiak, a Korean War veteran and artist.
Gromosiak's paintings of American warships line the VA's hallway near where the front page used to hang and where another newspaper, proclaiming "GERMANY QUITS," hangs still. "You cannot hide history, or you shouldn't."
Museums frequently pair controversial displays with detailed explanations. As part of the National World War II Museum's exhibit of propaganda posters, captions prepare viewers for what they're seeing and put the grotesque images into context.
"You would never want to put up an object without interpreting it," said Kacey Hill, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans museum.
"But we are not a museum," said Mattice, the VA director. "A museum is where people go to understand the history. We are a medical center."
Mattice said he has asked the VA's national ethics office how to proceed.
In the meantime, he searches for a compromise. Mattice has instructed one of his staffers to locate a different newspaper front page, one that carries the same news of the war's end but expressed more delicately.
Ellie
Historic page's slur prompts dispute
By Will Higgins
The Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS -- Tom Mattice said he was trying to promote a "healing environment" when he removed the old, yellowing newspaper page from a hallway at the Veterans Affairs hospital.
But in doing so, the hospital director opened an old wound -- and spurred debate about political correctness, free speech and how to be true to history without being offensive.
At issue is a framed front page from an August 1945 Indianapolis Times. The headline: "Japs Surrender."
Mattice, director of the Roudebush VA Medical Center, said a new employee was offended by the term "Japs," a commonly used word during World War II.
So Mattice took down the page, tucking it away in the center's offices.
That decision has riled a group of retired Marines who call it whitewashing history and akin to offering an apology that isn't due. They are campaigning to have the page put back on the wall, where it had hung alongside other World War II memorabilia for more than a decade.
Said Ronald "Bud" Albright, who as commandant of the local Marine Corps League chapter has started a letter-writing campaign among veterans nationwide: "We feel it's a slap in the face of the U.S. military. That newspaper is history, part of United States history."
Such disputes are not rare. Last month, Indianapolis International Airport altered a photo exhibit after fielding a complaint over a provocative view of Israel and American Jews expressed in one of the captions.
In 2002, some students at Indiana University fought for the removal of a Thomas Hart Benton mural depicting Indiana history in Woodburn Hall because it showed Ku Klux Klansmen. The mural stayed.
The term "Jap" is emblematic of the racial prejudice that was promoted during World War II.
"A precondition to fight a war is to dehumanize the enemy," said Guy Burgess, a co-director of the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado. "If you think of them as humans, you can't do the things war compels you to do."
In the case of Japan and Germany, Burgess said, it was an easy sell. "There was lots of real evil in the Axis countries," he said.
But that was more than 60 years ago. The Japanese, as well as the Germans and the Italians, have been allies ever since.
"The war's over, but if you're going to tell it like it is, then you tell it like it was, and that's the way it was, just like that newspaper said it," said John Gromosiak, a Korean War veteran and artist.
Gromosiak's paintings of American warships line the VA's hallway near where the front page used to hang and where another newspaper, proclaiming "GERMANY QUITS," hangs still. "You cannot hide history, or you shouldn't."
Museums frequently pair controversial displays with detailed explanations. As part of the National World War II Museum's exhibit of propaganda posters, captions prepare viewers for what they're seeing and put the grotesque images into context.
"You would never want to put up an object without interpreting it," said Kacey Hill, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans museum.
"But we are not a museum," said Mattice, the VA director. "A museum is where people go to understand the history. We are a medical center."
Mattice said he has asked the VA's national ethics office how to proceed.
In the meantime, he searches for a compromise. Mattice has instructed one of his staffers to locate a different newspaper front page, one that carries the same news of the war's end but expressed more delicately.
Ellie