......how about Hector and Coolie : two tough guys, the right age, I wonder why they hadn't enlisted after pearl harbor ? ( I'm guessing that maybe Pete would have been too young ?? )
:-)
Tough guys with those smaller and weaker than themselves. They probably didn't enlist because they were cowards too and hid behind different deferments to avoid military service.
shareEnlist??? How did they keep from getting drafted???
What we have here is failure to communicate!share
What makes you think they weren't in the service? I don't recall them or anyone saying they weren't. Correct me if I'm wrong...
share
True, only Robert Ryan said they wouldn't take him.
What we have here is failure to communicate!share
This is going largely off memory : my answer would be simply that no-one states that they WERE in the service . The impression I got was that they had languished around the town for years and have never actually left there . The script emphasises that Smith tried ( and was rejected ) for service , that Maccready was IN the service, and that some other characters were either too young or too old for service. These two characters are (again going off memory ) never identified as having fought the Japanese in active duty. I therefore would assume that they had not done so - it surely would have surfaced somewhere in the screenplay ?? Just my opinion anyway :-)
shareNot really. My father served in the Pacific during World War II but rarely spoke about it. Only about some of the oddballs he served with.
shareChances are they were rejected because they had criminal records serious enough to keep them out. Moral grounds (often a cover name in that era for homosexuality) was also a 4F. Other reasons for rejection during the early part of World War included not enough teeth (you needed half), no education, bad eyesight, flat feet, non-functioning ears, children, dependent parents, wives, etc. Later in the war, as the need for soldiers became a bit more desperate, the age classification was expanded out to males 10-42, and illiteracy was no longer enough to keep you out, as the military set up reading classes. Being nearsighted was reason at first to be turned down. That also changed. During the war the army issued at least 2 million pairs of glasses. They also even took men with one eye.
At the beginning of the war - when the backstory occurred - no one who was convicted of even trivial petty misdemeanor crimes like shop lifting were allowed in. That changed over time and by 1945 at least 100,000 convicted felons had served. Some volunteered to be drafted straight from prison in order to shorten their sentences. So the petty crooks of Black Rock would not have been eligible to be drafted - and might very well have been rejected by the military already, as selective service and the draft boards were set up in 1940.
Very interesting post.
shareActually, my father was rejected when he tried to join up after Pearl Harbour when he was a student at Stanford University. He was still a Canadian citizen and Canada which had been at war as a member of the Commonwealth did not have conscription so he was not drafted. My father was disqualified in '41 for not having American citizenship. He later matriculated at the U of Alabama and was commissioned as an officer later during the war. Luckily for him. If he had been accepted earlier he would have been stationed in the Philippines and incarcerated or worse. Nowadays, the military accepts all nationalities, all cannon fodder being alike.
Small world. I live in Alabama, my father was in the Air Force, and we were stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines from '69 to '71. Of course, it was different then. Not at all like it would have been for your father if he'd been sent there during WW2.
~ the hardest thing in this world... is to live in it ~
the age classification was expanded out to males 10-42
Speaking of opinions...
The first time I saw this film, the story that Smith tells Macreedy about going to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor - particularly his tone of voice when he says, "They wouldn't take me" - didn't ring true for me. I really expected that it would be revealed that he hadn't done so at all.
It seemed to me the story Pete tells about Smith getting drunk after being turned down would have been much truer to the basically cowardly nature of the character if it had instead gone that Smith had started drinking first, perhaps to "fortify" himself, and, having gotten drunk and not gone to enlist at all, came back to Black Rock with a phony story about being turned down to cover his cowardice.
But perhaps the war, and everyone "doing their part," was still fresh enough in minds in '55 that even a slimeball like Smith would nevertheless have been expected to do so. But I think the screenwriters missed a bet.
Anyway, that's my opinion. Oh, and another: Ryan was always one of the most effective - and interesting - "bad guys" of the post-war era.
Poe! You are...avenged!
doghouse-6 --
The fact that Reno tried to enlist is important in establishing the character as being an anti-Japanese racist. He wanted to enlist so he could kill Japanese people.
The bitterness over getting turned down probably helps fuel his ongoing hostility.
Interesting viewpoint, and one that raises any number of equally interesting issues about Smith, the film and America in general.
I've never actually viewed Smith as particularly racist, against the Japanese or otherwise. But it's true that what we think of as racism today is quite different from what it was in 1941. For instance, the three-letter term used for the Japanese all through the war actually predates it, and points to a "white supremacist" attitude - toward all other races - that was then prevalent in the country (and widely reflected in films of the era to a degree that makes present-day viewers uncomfortable).
But it was a type of racism that was not necessarily rooted in hostility, and one that probably wasn't even thought of as racism, if it was thought of at all. It was simply a holdover from earlier, less-enlightened times; a white "entitlement mentality" that manifested itself in the portrayal of African-Americans as a servant class, Asians as speaking in broken English and so forth, and allowed humor in the form of mockery or mimicry now viewed as both insensitive and racist - such as black-face - to be seen as acceptable and unremarkable.
Our entry into the war inflamed these attitudes where Japanese-Americans were concerned, as they were now seen - or at least suspected - as "the enemy," leading to a kind of wholesale, institutionalized treatment that was not similarly visited upon Americans of German or Italian extraction.
It all makes such racism, in the context of wartime, quite complex. When notions of white supremacy become entangled with the concept of "the enemy," it's difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. And since many thousands of Americans enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor, I don't think it would be accurate to ascribe overt racism as the motivation thereof.
In the case of Smith in such a climate - and with the establishment of him as both a villainous character and one who is automatically hostile to outsiders (as evidenced by his speech to Macreedy at the service station) - it may be enough that he was already resentful of Komoko for his having discovered water on land Smith thought to be worthless, and that this resentment exploded into a drunken act of violence in the wake of Dec 7. It's also his instigation of this act that sets him apart from the other townsfolk - even goons Hector and Coley, always simply doing as Smith told them - who may very well have harbored similar attitudes, but would never have acted on them.
That's probably a lot more than you might have expected in the way of a reply, but I found your theory an especially thought-provoking one.
Poe! You are...avenged!
Teddy Salad is correct. He wasn't able to hurt the Japanese officially (i.e., via the military), so he did it on his own.
shareIt is possible that some of the characters were not in the military during World War II simply by chance. What was the US population in World war II? A hundred million? one hundred fifty million?
If half of the population was male, and half or more of them were of military age, at least a quarter of the population would be men of military age. But the country, advanced as it was, could not support such a large percentage of the population in the military. I believe about twelve million men were in the military in World wAr II and thus there were several times as many men in civilian life as in the military. Thus a man would be more likely to remain a civilian than serve in the military.
And it is possible, though unlikely, that the draft board ignored Black Rock with its slim pickings.
The U.S. population in the 1940 plus decade was about 140 million. 16.5 million Americans served on active duty at some point between 1941 and 1946. The 12.5 million figure that is often cited is the number who were in service at the peak of the personnel roles. That's not quite twelve percent of the population. Some women served, but they were a small portion of the 16.5 million. Almost all of them were between 19 and 36 years of age on entry. So it does narrow the manpower pool substantially.
Still, many people could have avoided service by intent or by chance. Most wanted to serve, although the majority waited for the draft to take them rather than enlist. Even conscientious objectors wanted to serve, albeit in positions that would ensure they did not take a life, such as combat medics.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
Yeah, I don't think Smith really tried all that hard to enlist. When Smith said the military wouldn't take him, his voice had a phony note to it, like, "I'm lying and you know I'm lying, but I'm just going to tell you the fake story anyway so we can pretend that everything is okay for a few more seconds."
Although... at the hotel later, we hear that Smith went to Sand City the day after Pearl Harbor and came back "pretty sore." And McCready chimes in with, "yeah, he went to enlist." So, McCready seems to believe it, maybe?
I don't know. Something about the story, and the fact that NONE of the local guys seem to have been in the war, just seems pretty strange to me. The ar had just ended a few months previously... seems like something they would be discussing, especially once they heard that McCready was overseas.
There were deferments to service during the war, working in a war production industry, essential business, etc. It could be that the cowboys were exempt because they were involved in the production of food, beef that is.
Or, the fact that they didn't serve wasn't considered by the screenwriters. After all, Hollywood isn't interested in historical accuracy and details, only a good story that will make money...
Ronald Reagan was rejected because of partial deafness, Errol Flynn was rejected because of a heart murmur.
Many men were not allowed to enlist because they worked in essential industries, many of which were essential to the War Effort. A country cannot ground to a standstill because everybody is at war.
Agricultural worker deferments.
shareOne of the most common reasons for being turned down was flat feet. Also, President Truman was horrified to discover how many men were turned down because of malnourishment! They couldn't pass the physical because they had been undernourished during the depression.
shareGood points. There were a number of physical defects which would exempt men from military service, though by all accounts many were good physical specimens. Some of these exempt men were still capable of being professional athletes. This did stir up some controversy.
I could see how some flat footed men could perform in certain athletics but weren't suitable for the Army which might encompass long hikes.