Rhonda Tintle on: John W. Dower,

War Without Mercy: Race And Power In The Pacific War

(New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).Mutual racism was a major dynamic in the way Japan and the United States engaged eachother during World War II. The American people responded with horror and rage at the bombingof Pearl Harbor. However, anti-Japanese racism existed in the United States before the war; itwas not a result of the war. The United States decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9, 1945) was motivated in part by racism. Americans and Japanese bothconsidered the other inferior. Historical treatments of World War II have suffered due to extreme patriotism, persisting racial stereotypes, and historical amnesia. America and Japan have areciprocal agreement about historical amnesia concerning their common histories as well asJapan’s history with China. In

War Without Mercy

John Dower looks at American and Japaneseracist propaganda in the form of films, music, cartoons, and pseudoscientific studies. Americansdepicted Japanese as apes, octopi, bats, rats, rapists, and midgets. Japanese depicted Americansas cannibals, demons, criminals, little Napoleons, and dandruff. The racism on both sides led toatrocious behaviors, for example, Japanese soldiers who beheaded unarmed captured Americans;American soldiers who slit the throats of Japanese who were trying to surrender.In “Western Eyes” the Japanese were not human; in media representations and Americanminds they ceased to be individuals and became the Jap hordes. Americans feared that if theUnited States lost to Japan, billions of Asians would come to control the West. This was anirrational fear because the Japan’s population was only 73 million. Japanese propagandists played up this fear and issued propaganda showing the massive populace of seven Asian nationsovercoming the inadequate resistance of Roosevelt and Churchill. Americans often depicted theJapanese as apes, sometimes wearing Nazi uniforms and swastikas. The chapter "Primitives,Children, Madmen,” examines samples of the pseudoscientific studies Anglos made about theJapanese race and culture. One British anthropologist, for example, released a study called"Themes in Japanese Culture;” Time magazine reprinted this study with the title “Why are JapsJaps?" In addition, experts published pseudoscientific articles such as “Jap Cruelty Traced toChildhood," "Jap Bullies," and "How to Tell Japs from Chinese.”In Japanese eyes, they themselves were the sole, homogeneous, pure, and untainted race.Japanese racism extended everyone; for example, they depicted China as a beast with ChiangKai-shek's face. Japanese propaganda often portrayed Americans as street thugs. In the light of the Rising Sun, one lone wooden shoe represented what remained of the Dutch. The Japaneseconsidered themselves the leading race (

shido minzoku

) of the world. The Rising Sun was asymbol of purity. The purifying sun could burn away all others. The Japanese provided their own studies demonstrating that monkeys were closely related to Europeans with their hairy ape-like bodies, long arms, low brain-to-body weight ratio, and strong body odor. The irony of Japan’s anti-white racism is twofold: 1) their allies (Germany and Italy) were white and; 2) Japancame to power by whole-heartedly embracing a Western-inspired form of modernization.Dower warns that Americans uncritically accept every story of atrocity and brutalityattributed to the Japanese, because Americans are so racist against the Japanese. He contendsthat Anglos have dealt more gently with their white counterparts in Germany, who were of multinational backgrounds, and who condoned the annihilation of the Jews. He further arguesthat Anglo historians hesitate to examine the anti-Semitism in the United States and Great Britainthat deterred these countries from mounting “a serious rescue campaign” earlier. Anglo racismagainst the Japanese was unmitigated, there was no “good German” equivalent in Japan.