In War Without Mercy, John W. Dower approaches World War II from both the Western perspective and the Japanese perspective. Dower, as many others, views the war as a race war (Dower 4). Racism negatively influenced the conduct of this war. The amount of violence and brutality inflicted on each enemy is only made possible by the thought that this enemy is less than human. Dehumanizing another person makes it easy for someone to act as they please without remorse. The dehumanization of others, due to prejudice, racial pride, and use of propaganda, intensified the brutality of the Pacific War. The act of Americans comparing another race to a species, other than human, was not a new thing during World War II; it had been done time and time again before. African Americans were exhibited as orangutans, Native Americans were portrayed as baboons, and then the Japanese were called yellow vermin, apes, or even yellow monkeys (Dower 149). All these people were non-white, so they were just “others.” They were all portrayed as inferior, non-intellectual savages incapable of conjuring moral thoughts (Dower 148). To Americans and other westerners, the Japanese were underdeveloped, savages, and inferior fighters. They were unimaginative cowards that could not possibly plan and execute elaborate
This is exactly why the war became so brutal. Atrocities that were unthinkable to Americans became reality with just enough racial discrimination and propaganda. The Japanese did everything they could to promote and prove to themselves that they were the master race and all other races were just outsiders, some human and some nonhuman. Americans believed most nonwhite races were so inferior they were comparable to species less than human. Stereotypes, propaganda, and prejudice caused the Americans and the Japanese to decrease to worth of the lives of their enemies,; and therefore justified their brutish
Throughout humanity, human beings have been faced with ethnic hardships, conflict, and exclusion because of the battle for authority. Hence, in human nature, greed, and overall power consumes the mind of some people. Groups throughout the world yearn for the ability to be the mightiest one. These types of conflicts include ethnic shaming, racial exclusion, physical and verbal abuse, enslavement, imprisonment, and even death. Some of these conflicts were faced in all parts of Europe and the Pacific Region during World War II. During this dark time in history, people like Miss.Breed from Dear Miss Breed took initial action in what she thought was right, and gave hope to Japanese Internment Camp children by supplying books and
Forced to relocate into internment camps, Japanese-Americans were feared and considered the enemy. With anti-Japanese prejudice existing for years (prior to WWII), the military actions of Japan, erupted the hostility
A war like the Pacific theatre, which was led by ignorance, arrogance, anger, and racism, is undoubtedly going to be a living hell for both sides. The title for Dowers book says it all, a war without mercy, full of countless acts of brutality not shown in other fronts and treacherous war crimes on either side causing a lot of young men to suffer horrible, and many pointless, deaths. In conclusion, Dower brings to light many good points about racial issues, which is a subject that had been avoided for a long period of time, and the consequences of actions taken over racial issues. I agree with Dower and understand better now what caused the Pacific Theatre to be so much more atrocious than the other fronts in which the Allies were involved.
The racial conflict with Japanese-Americans began when the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a military naval base located in the state of Hawaii. “Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes, and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships” (“Attack” 1). The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on the Empire of Japan. The fear that resulted from the attack on Pearl Harbor caused many white Americans to hate the Japanese-Americans. Many Japanese were accused of being spies and were arrested without proof. “Rabid anti-Japanese American racism surfaced the first days after Pearl Harbor. The FBI and the military had been compiling lists of "potentially dangerous" Japanese Americans since 1932, but most were merely teachers, businessmen or journalists” (Thistlethwaite 1). In February of 1942, all of the Japanese on the West Coast of the United States were sent to internment camps.
while allowing German and Italian aliens to remain free because "a Jap is a Jap" and World War II was "a war of the white race against a yellow race." (pg., 89).
When fear is struck in desperate minds, they are capable of taking action disregarding the lives of others as well as the basic rules of civilization. The play written by Arthur Miller, The Crucible, is a desirable example of society’s boundaries of “removing” innocent people who bring concern or unease into their lives, this hysteria is astonishingly relatable to the discrimination of Japanese- Americans/Canadians during and post WWII. As Nelson Mandela once said: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” [FOOTNOTE] This quote
John Dower's War Without Mercy describes the ugly racial dimensions of the conflict in the Asian theater of World War II and their consequences on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. "In the United States and Britain," Dower reminds us, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Conservative readers, don't fret - Dower isn't making this argument to exonerate the Japanese for their own racism or war crimes -- after all, "atrocious behavior occurred on all sides in the Pacific War." (12-13) Rather, Dower is exploring the propaganda of the US-Japanese conflict to delineate the "patterns of a race war," the cultural mechanisms of "othering," and the portability of racial/racist stereotypes. For "as the war years themselves changed over into into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well." (13)
Racial demeanor towards the Japanese has existed long before the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Even back in 1905 some Americans despised the idea of growing immigration from Japan. These white workers claimed that the typical Japanese man was “bumptious, disagreeable, and unreliable”, and that the country would be blessed to receive less “oriental labor” (Japanese
Japanese immigration created the same apprehension and intolerance in the mind of the Americans as was in the case of Chinese migration to the U.S at the turn of the 19th century. They developed a fear of being overwhelmed by a people having distinct ethnicity, skin color and language that made them “inassimilable.” Hence they wanted the government to restrict Asian migration. Japan’s military victories over Russia and China reinforced this feeling that the Western world was facing what came to be known as “yellow peril”. This was reflected in the media, movies and in literature and journalism.4 Anti-Oriental public opinion gave way to several declarations and laws to restrict Japanese prosperity on American land. Despite the prejudice and ineligibility to obtain citizenship the ...
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
It was no secret that when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, countless Americans were frightened on what will happen next. The attack transpiring during WW2 only added to the hysteria of American citizens. According to the article “Betrayed by America” it expressed,”After the bombing many members of the public and media began calling for anyone of Japanese ancestry။citizens or not။to be removed from the West Coast.”(7) The corroboration supports the reason why America interned Japanese-Americans because it talks about Americans wanting to remove Japanese-Americans from the West Coast due to Japan bombing America. Japan bombing America led to Americans grow fear and hysteria. Fear due to the recent attack caused internment because Americans were afraid of what people with Japanese ancestry could do. In order to cease the hysteria, America turned to internment. American logic tells us that by getting the Japanese-Americans interned, many
World War II was a time of deliberate hate among groups of innocent people who were used as scapegoats. Japanese-Americans were persecuted due to the fact that they looked like citizens of Japan, who had attacked the United States on December 7th, 1941 at the naval base, Pearl Harbor. This hatred toward the group was due to newspapers creating a scare for the American people, as well as the government restricting the rights of Japanese-Americans. The Japanese-Americans were mistreated during World War II for no other reason than being different. These men, women, and children were loathed by the American public for looking like the people of the Japanese army that had attacked the United States. These people were only hated by association, even though many had come to the United States to create a better life for their family.
Steven Pinker implied that, “As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to the mass murder of people” (1). Steven Pinker revealed an interesting side to the controversial topic of mass murders and the causes of them. He revealed that as long as people in this world believe that they are better than other due to their race, religion, and everything else that defines a group of people as different from another group of people. People are and have been wrongfully treated differently due to the incompetence of some to realize that everyone is equal. They often believe that they were superior to others because of their physical attributes and beliefs that they had. The Holocaust is a major example of the ignorance of some in history. This ignorance often resulted in the murders and mistreatment of many. Elie Wiesel was one of the six million plus people who were wrongfully mistreated during the Holocaust. Many believe that this sort of event could not occur in the current time period because people have become more civilized and tolerable to the differences of others, but sadly the world is not ready to contain a social utopia. The mass murder, and violence that is occurring in Darfur is one of the many things that shows that the world is far from achieving this social utopia. Throughout history, many occurrences of genocide have occurred due to the diversity of people and even though society has evolved greatly, there are still people and places today that are suffering.
The Web. The Web. 24 May 2014. " Final Solutions: Murderous Racial Hygiene, 1939–1945."
America was built on a notion of freedom, justice, and equality, thus inviting people from all different parts of the world to pursue success while still retaining their background. However, despite what this nation was truly supposed to stand for, there were grim periods in which it did not truly uphold its core values. During World War II, in which the relationship between the U.S. and Japan was at its worst, many Japanese- Americans faced discrimination and injustice. Americans claimed that this needed to be done as a national emergency and for the peace of the nation. From the sources “War Message” by Franklin D. Roosevelt and “Desert Exile” by Yoshiko Uchida we can piece together the events that lead to the discrimination of Japanese