War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War, By John Dower (Roaring 20's-WWII, Ethnicity & Race, Military & Foreign Policy)

War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War 

By John Dower 

Roaring 20's-WWII
Ethnicity & Race
Military & Foreign Policy

Thesis:

 Racism between the West and Asia made the war in the Pacific particularly merciless and brutal. Widespread wartime atrocities and civilian casualties were justified by racist sentiment that promoted the idea that this is what was required to defeat such an uncivilized foe. This thought process went both ways, West towards Asia, and Asia towards the West.

 

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary: 
The author first describes the methods of propaganda that were inspired by racism and how these impacted the soldiers and the battlefield. The war was much more brutal with civilian casualties and war atrocities committed on both sides. Americans believed that the Japanese needed to exterminated like vermin not reprogrammed like the Germans. They believed that the only good Japanese were dead Japanese. The irredeemable quality of Japanese in the minds of Americans was unique. This was why even American citizens were placed in internment camps if they were of Japanese origin.
The Japanese felt that they were a pure people not diluted like the intermixed brutes of America. They saw the way Westerners conquered Asian people and felt they had no right to rule them. Japan felt they were the best fit to rule the Asian world.
Once the author established the racist attitudes back and forth between the Japanese and the Americans and how it ultimately led to a viciously brutal war, the author describes how these ideas were subverted into ideologies that fostered a peaceful occupation and thereafter a relatively friendly relationship between the two nations. The US once again found their mission to bring up a lesser people and act as the big brother. The US sought to bring the benefits of capitalist individualism to Japan.

 

What does this tell us about Ethnicity and Race in the Roaring 20's-WWII?

The racism of the of Pacific Theater of WWII demonstrates how Americans refused to see any Asian people as equal. Before Pearl Harbor, they believed that there was no way that the Japanese had any real power when compared to the West. After Pearl Harbor they were viewed as all following a single mind (the emperor) and empowered with no fear of death and an all sacrificing sub-human quality. Within the United States, the treatment of Japanese or even just anyone with Asian decent was terrible and got worse with Pearl Harbor. This was much different than people of German heritage. The atrocities committed on both sides of the battlefield were justified by racism. Here the ideas of scientific racism are present, advocating a stronger race that should rule over lesser peoples.

What does this tell us about Military & Foreign Policy in the Roaring 20's-WWII?
The author convincingly argues that the US policy in war towards Japan was hugely influenced by racism. The use of two atomic weapons when the war was clearly already won was justified with racist sentiment that this different type of people had to be completely subdued to the point of unconditional surrender. They had to agree to sacrifice their way of life and potentially their emperor. 

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

Frank Capra documentary, Know Your Enemy - Japan

General Thoughts:

It was really interesting that in this situation the US turned the Chinese into good guys (although still lesser people). The Chinese could be molded into good people but the Japanese had no hope of that.

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"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."

"Yellow, Red, and Black Men" examines the notions of racial difference occupying the American mind since Columbus. More specifically, Dower outlines the concept of race war and the "Yellow Peril," and how this peril had become encoded in American immigration law."

"Once the war started, of course, the dehumanization of the enemy in the Pacific led to many notable atrocities on both sides of the conflict, from the infamous Bataan death march to the collection of noses, ears, teeth, and skulls by Allied soldiers, from the execution of three Doolittle Raid flyers to the slaughtering of surrendering Japanese at Bougainville. As Dower notes, these wartime atrocities spawned a vicious circle that, once publicized, led to more and more atrocities."

"Dower's study is fascinating. He shows the  interaction of racist ideas. To the Japanese, 
Japan's homogeneity, common purpose, corporate unity, and will were evidence of Japan's purity of race; to the Americans they were proof of Japan's primitiveness and uncivilized status. Americans, on the other hand, glorified individualism, creative entrepreneurship, and maximum individual liberty, all proof to the Japanese of America's racial heterogeneity and inability to mobilize its people to pursue anything morally worthwhile."

"How could such a savage killing frenzy as marked the final year of the war in the Pacific have been followed so suddenly by what still appears to be a benign occupation and subsequently friendly relations? The code words and images were malleable, he answers, and could be turned almost inside out. The yellow ape could become a pet, insanity could be cured with tender care, and the child could be shown how to mature-all expressions of American generosity, but also of American superiority. The Japanese did no less. The emperor invoked the national polity when he asked his people to endure the unendurable in defeat. The imperial institution was preserved, and Japanese began anew the struggle to find their rightful place in the world hierarchy."

My Highlighted Passages

"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) 

"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)

"At the simplest level, they dehumanized the Japanese and enlarged the chasm between 'us' and 'them' to the point where it was perceived to be virtually unbridgeable." 

"transitions and juxtapositions in the Western image of the Japanese were abrupt and jarring: from subhuman to superhuman, lesser men to supermen. There was a common point throughout, in that the Japanese were rarely perceived as being human beings of a generally comparable and equal sort." (99)

"the metaphor of the child was used in a manner that highlighted the overlapping nature of immaturity, primitivism, violence, and emotional instability as key concepts for understanding the Japanese." (143)

"Where racism in the West was markedly characterized by denigration of others," writes Dower, "the Japanese were preoccupied far more exclusively with elevating themselves. While the Japanese were not inadept at belittling other races and saddling them with contemptuous stereotypes, they spent more time wrestling with the question of what it really meant to be 'Japanese,' how the 'Yamato race' was unique among the races and cultures of the world, and why this uniqueness made them superior."(204-205)

"the Japanese presented themselves as being 'purer' than others -- a concept that carried both ancient religious connotations and complex contemporary ramifications," (231-232)

"the Anglo-Americans were described as demons (oni), devils (kichiku), fiends (akki and akuma), and monsters (kaibutsu.)" (244)

"Despite such differences(in what tactics of racist rhetoric were used), however, the end results of racial thinking on both sides were virtually identical -- being hierarchy, arrogance, viciousness, atrocity, and death." (180) 

"To the victors, the simian became a pet, the child a pupil, the madman a patient."