{"id":2612,"date":"2020-03-10T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/?p=2612"},"modified":"2020-03-09T15:02:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T19:02:15","slug":"war-and-racism-in-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/10\/war-and-racism-in-the-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cRemember Pearl Harbor\u2014Keep \u2018Em Dying\u201d: War and Racism in the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

by John Whitehead<\/p>\n

American planes dropped firebombs on Tokyo 75 years ago, on the night of March 9-10, 1945, killing an estimated 80,000-100,000 people. The firebombing began a six-month-long American bombing campaign against 66 Japanese cities that culminated in the two atomic bombings and killed roughly 400,000 people in total. This killing campaign was the climax of a war between the United States and Japan characterized by the most extreme racism imaginable.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Pacific War brought together two of the major threats to life identified in the Consistent Life Network\u2019s mission statement: racism and war. While the Pacific War was hardly unique in this regard, it does offer a vivid example of how war, especially wartime propaganda, encourages racist perceptions of others to make it easier to kill them. Propaganda often draws on existing prejudice and stereotypes about a racial, ethnic, or national group and pushes them to an extreme. Consistent life ethic advocates working against both racism and war would do well to remember this historical instance of how the two merged.<\/p>\n

Demonizing the Enemy<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Before 1941, Japan and the United States had never fought a full-scale war, but each had negative attitudes toward the other that wartime leaders could exploit. Japanese hostility toward Americans was fostered partly by resentment over western colonialism (a 1943 Japanese propaganda paper declared the war \u201cthe counteroffensive of the Oriental races against Occidental aggression\u201d) combined with nationalist ideology that elevated Japanese over others as the \u201cYamato race,\u201d a spiritually privileged people. Long-running negative American attitudes toward the Japanese<\/a> existed in a larger context of racism toward Asians and other non-whites and had prompted, almost 20 years before the war, restrictions on Japanese immigration<\/a> and state laws against Japanese Americans owning land.<\/p>\n

Once war began, racial hatred went into overdrive. Historian John Dower, in his book War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War <\/em>and elsewhere, has analyzed the language and imagery used. Japanese propaganda literally demonized the Americans and British: \u201cDevilish Anglo-Americans\u201d became a stock phrase. In 1944, a Japanese magazine published demonic caricatures of Roosevelt and Churchill threatening Japan, along with the exhortation, \u201cBeat and kill these animals that have lost their human nature! That is the great mission that Heaven has given to the Yamato race, for the eternal peace of the world.\u201d Another magazine commented that the more Americans \u201care sent to hell, the cleaner the world will be.\u201d Official newsreels referred to Iwo Jima as \u201ca suitable place to slaughter the American devils.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"American propaganda and popular sentiment were equally extreme. The official 1945 propaganda film Know Your Enemy\u2014Japan <\/em>characterized the Japanese as masses without individuality: \u201cphotographic prints off the same negative.\u201d The Marine Corps magazine Leatherneck <\/em>ran a cartoon in 1942 featuring a caricature of a Japanese soldier in a gun\u2019s cross-hairs with the slogan \u201cRemember Pearl Harbor\u2014Keep \u2018Em Dying.\u201d A 1944 edition of Leatherneck <\/em>referred to an insect called \u201cLouseous Japanicas\u201d <\/em>and foreshadowed future events by saying that \u201cbefore a complete cure may be effected the origin of the plague, the breeding grounds around the Tokyo area, must be completely annihilated.\u201d A 1942 parade in New York similarly predicted future American actions by featuring a float that showed bombs falling on yellow rats and bore the slogan \u201cTokyo: We Are Coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anti-Japan propaganda differed significantly from US propaganda about Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Posters, cartoons, and the like generally focused on the European countries\u2019 leaders, with caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini. By contrast, the Japanese people as such were targets of American propaganda. A popular song\u2019s title reflected the contrast: \u201cThere\u2019ll Be No Adolph Hitler Nor Yellow Japs to Fear.\u201d Wartime attitudes did not leave room for \u201cgood Japanese\u201d as it did for \u201cgood Germans.\u201d Leatherneck <\/em>ran a photo of Japanese killed in the battle of Guadalcanal with the caption: \u201cGOOD <\/u>JAPS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anti-Japanese sentiment also drew on familiar racist tropes. Propaganda posters featured monstrous Japanese soldiers menacing white women, echoing racist fears about black American men. Simian imagery, frequently applied to black Americans (and sometimes others, such as Irish Americans) in the United States, was also applied to the Japanese. Admiral William Halsey, the commander of US South Pacific naval forces, referred to \u201cyellow monkeys.\u201d Halsey also offered this mission statement: \u201cKill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Halsey was unusually crude, but other leading American and Allied officials provided their own share of extreme rhetoric. Addressing a joint session of the US Congress in 1943, Churchill spoke of \u201claying the cities and other munitions centers of Japan in ashes\u2026before peace comes back to the world.\u201d A US naval official involved in postwar planning argued at one point for \u201cthe almost total elimination of the Japanese as a race,\u201d emphasizing that \u201cwhite civilization was at stake.\u201d Government official Paul McNutt gave a speech in April 1945, during the US bombing of Japan, calling for \u201cthe extermination of the Japanese in toto.\u201d A significant minority of Americans seemed to agree: a December 1944 public opinion poll found 13 percent of respondents\u2019 favored post-war policy was \u201ckill all Japanese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Effects of Racism<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Pacific war pushed existing racism to new extremes. How did such extreme racism in turn shape the conduct of the war?<\/p>\n

The US-Japanese War was marked by horrifying violence, not only the bombing of Japanese cities and battlefield violence but also the torture and killing of prisoners, the wounded, and other helpless troops by both sides. Extreme racism presumably contributed to this brutality, although the contribution should not be overstated. The war in Europe was also horrifically violent: German cities were firebombed. Also, while Japanese propaganda did not demonize other Asian nationalities, that did not protect those nationalities from massive Japanese violence.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, one can recognize both other wartime violence as comparable to that between the United States and Japan and other causes of violence apart from racism while still identifying pervasive racism as a factor in the Pacific War\u2019s brutality. US policymakers\u2019 own statements point to such a connection. Secretary of War Henry Stimson thought<\/a> ignorance contributed to the uncompromising American attitude toward Japan and lamented the \u201ccomplacency, the indifference, and the silence with which we greeted the mass bombings in Europe, and, above all, Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justifying the atomic bombings, Truman made the revealing statement \u201cWhen you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the US wartime approach to domestic civil liberties provides a clear example of racism shaping policy. The imprisonment of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese heritage<\/a> in concentration camps, on suspicion of disloyalty to the United States, was unambiguously the result of racism. General John DeWitt, the official in charge of the imprisonment, summed up the underlying attitude by saying \u201cA Jap\u2019s a Jap. You can\u2019t change him by giving him a piece of paper.\u201d While some imprisonment and persecution of German-Americans<\/a> and Italian-Americans<\/a> took place during the war, it was never on the same scale as with Japanese-Americans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Postwar Change?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Following Japan\u2019s surrender and the American occupation, violently racist propaganda faded on both sides. While the occupation was deeply violent<\/a> and unjust<\/a> in crucial respects, the United States did not pursue \u201cthe extermination of the Japanese in toto\u201d and no longer used such extreme dehumanizing rhetoric and imagery toward their former opponents. Paternalism toward Japan replaced hatred, and the United States and Japan have remained allies in the decades since the occupation. The change in attitudes has both hopeful and ominous lessons.<\/p>\n

The hopeful lesson is that racist attitudes are not fixed or unchangeable and that even the most toxic racism can dissipate if the political context encouraging it changes. The ominous lesson is that those in power can promote extreme racism that might not otherwise exist if they deem political needs\u2014such as fighting a war\u2014require it.<\/p>\n

Consistent life ethic advocates should remember these lessons. We must be on guard against the racist demonization of people our governments designate as \u201cenemies\u201d and insist on recognizing our common humanity. The Pacific War provides a horrifying example of what can happen when such recognition is lost.<\/p>\n

====================================<\/p>\n

For more of John Whitehead’s posts on World War II and its aftermath, see:<\/p>\n

The Wages of War, Part 1: How Abortion Came to Japan<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wages of War, Part 2: How Forced Sterilization Came to Japan<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rejecting Mass Murder: Looking Back on Hiroshima and Nagasaki<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Finding Common Ground on and Learning from World War II <\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by John Whitehead American planes dropped firebombs on Tokyo 75 years ago, on the night of March 9-10, 1945, killing an estimated 80,000-100,000 people. The firebombing began a six-month-long American bombing campaign against 66 Japanese cities that culminated in the two atomic bombings and killed roughly 400,000 people in total. This killing campaign was the… <\/p>\n