Oliver Stone    Photo: Li Hao/GT

Editor's Note:

Film director Oliver Stone revealed the dark side of US history in his TV series and book The Untold History of the United States. He came to Beijing on Friday to promote the Chinese translation of the book. How does he see relations between the US, Japan and China? Global Times (GT) reporter Sun Xiaobo interviewed Stone on Friday.

GT: In your new book you described the other side of US history. What mistake do you think the current US government is making?

Stone: I was born in 1946 and studied US history in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a traditional history of American exceptionalism: America as the sole major victor of WWII and as the defender of human rights against Soviet aggression of the Cold War and communist China after 1949. That was the history I grew up with and I believed it. So do most Americans. As I made more progressive movies in my 40s, from my experience I began to see what I call the dark side of the moon - not the other side because that implies we are taught untruth in school - we are taught partial truths. The average American student, children included, does not get the dark side of the moon. In other words we see the good face of America, we see the paternalism, the fighting for liberty and democracy etc., but we never see the money the war was making, the aggression, the love of itself, the nationalism, all of which are diseases every country has in the world. But the US is the No.1 military power in the world and has enormous weaponry. The consequences of our love or self-love are enormous as to create mischief-making in the world. As included in our last chapter, we go from the 1890s to the Obama administration, we have to include the pivot to Asia which describes a containment policy toward China that dates from the Soviet containment after WWII. When you examine the Cold War and its origins, it is not really to do with Soviet aggression but more to do with US aggression. This is a very important point that young people don't understand.

The US now has military alliances with Vietnam and the Philippines, renewed stronger alliances with Australia, South Korea and Japan, and its containment policy is very close to the Soviet policy in 1947, 1948. This is mischief making and it's also very dangerous because the US after Vietnam War pulled away from Asia. It was a disaster. We pulled away. We went elsewhere. We made trouble in the Middle East, South America etc. But now this is definitely a return to Asia. And the recent policies of the Japanese government are extremely disturbing for that reason and dangerous to the world. And the US has a lot to do with that because we nurtured Japanese governments. All these governments that come and go, with few exceptions, have been conservative governments following the American line. The time that Japan had leftist governments, none of them worked, and the last one - Hatoyama's government - its credibility was destroyed by Obama's treatment of Hatoyama.

Everywhere I go and talk to people, they ask "What about China?" It's a healthy country. Chinese people are hard working. They have good ethics. They go to work in the US, Latin America, Europe: You see them everywhere. They integrate into societies. They don't just disrupt them. They are not disruptive people. They like to work, to make money, like profit and peace. It's not hard to understand, but people don't see Chinese that way. The concept of mass thinking that China is going to be the next No. 1 and the US therefore has to be No.2, they cannot stand. That could be the cause of war because anything that happens, no matter how small, could be the cause of some silly war. Vietnam  started for nothing. No reason at all. It was an American-created war. So don't underestimate the American's capacity to create a war. That's not to say most people in the US want a war, no we don't. But because people don't control the government, and the government is a shadow government and in many ways makes their own decisions. They also have strong media, so the media can prop up and create a false situation easily, and push a large number of Americans into action against China. That's what we fear. There was almost a collision two months ago between the aircraft carriers.

GT: You are a world-renowned director and your book is a bestseller. Have you received any criticism for the opinions illustrated in your book?

Stone: Of course. This is a radical history of our country and this is looking at it upside down. It's very important that we ponder our past. We were ignored by the mainstream media in the US and received very few television interviews. But we were much appreciated by more progressive press. We aired the premiere on cable TV. We got shown many times. We also sold DVDs to big companies like Warner Brothers and to many foreign countries. We hope to sell to China. It's a long-term project and this is a wholly new way of thinking about our history. [Historian partner] Peter Kuznick and I are committed to this, going to high schools, colleges and around the world to do this. Here I'm talking to you on China. We keep working on it to sell this new idea, new way of thinking.

GT: The relationship between China and Japan soured after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine in December. You criticized Japan for its attitude toward wartime acts in August last year. Do you have any new comments to add?

Stone: Peter and I were in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Okinawa [of Japan] and Jeju Island in South Korea to protest the bases and the militarization of Japan. It was clear that with Abe's victory, Japan was trying to undermine the pacifist constitution, the Article 9, and Abe has an ugly history, his grandfather ... He was there in the memorial, talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but at the same time he was selling nuclear energy to Turkey and India etc., with Fukushima happening. This man's mind is made up. He is like George Bush in that way and there is no changing it. So it's not a good time. The secret law is very dangerous. They are following the US model which is a national security state. They are doing their Japanese style. Because Japan is the fifth-largest defense force in the world, very huge. It's not good for the world. There is a potentiality here. Japan has never studied its history. We went there last summer and were able to talk out US history, but they didn't know anything about Japanese war crimes. There are two museums in Japan, privately owned I think, which talk about the Japanese atrocities in Asia. Just talk about it. The kids don't know any more than the American kids that don't know the nuclear bombs were unnecessary to drop. This is a serious issue. The Japanese are happy to be victims of the nuclear war, they say they were the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they are ignoring that part of history that they also provoked a lot of hatred around the world with their imperialist policies in Asia. The kids don't know that. So therefore they might be the ones to ignore all the signs coming now from this group: signs of trouble ahead.