John Dower's War Without Mercy

Wayne E. Mattison
Dr. Don T. Sine
MILH-510- Studies in U.S. Military History
Book Review 4- John Dower, War without Mercy
Due: March 29, 2015
After the very sudden Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. citizens reacted with great fear and distain at the abruptly dangerous power of Japan and its empire. The modes of that rage were seen in portrayal of their nation in bureaucratic: cartoons, propaganda movies, songs of the period, and psychological applications frequently depicted Japan’s empire and people as apes, bats, sea-creators, behemoths, dwarfs and kids. In comparison, we find Japan in their ideological mindset wanted to force the Americans from the Pacific Ocean region, then portrayed its enemy as demonic, cannibals, thugs,

and Napoleonic controllers. The altering outlooks on Allied and Japanese protagonists of the pacific territories during the Second World War were the thesis of John W. Dower's elegantly analyzed and historically documented book. Dower separated his altercations equally about the propaganda modes and public attitudes of both nations. Another of Dower's main premise he showed was racial fear, and distain were key instruments that demonstrated how each sides the Japanese and Americans, observed and negotiated with the relevant enemy, the “inferior other.” In the part titled "the War in Western Eyes" the author inquiries in great structure the establishment of stereotyping their images of Japan’s, officials, and the public namely from U.S. sources. The Japanese were many times represented in a de-personified way as “hordes" notwithstanding the wartime residents of Japan was about 70 million. Originally this method characterization was the illusion fabrication of the "Yellow Peril" cultivated to some degree by the "Fu Manchu" writings of Rohmer. Legitimate or not, the dread of the billion-strong hordes located in the Orient would pour into the western world, was paramount in the American psyche.1 and 5

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Before the events at Pearl Harbor and the remarkable wartime success of Japan during 1942, particularly the capture of Singapore from self-contented Britain, the United States had failed to take Japan as a menace. They rated Japan’s military force as poor and handicapped fighters, incompetent of flying cutting-edge warplanes, unable to create effective gunships, and in-proficient in inventing up to date weapons and modes of battle. During the months after the start of war, the Americans and their Allies changed to an contradictory view, overemphasize from fantasizes of a willingness to die by Oriental qualities of the Japanese soldier. This change could be understood through the great number of depictions of Japanese as less than human. In the winter 1942 production of Punch, monkeys with helmets and machine guns are drawn swinging through vines, underlined with a quotation from Kipling's work. By 1943 Japan’s people were intently exhibited in cartoons as huge beastly gorillas (pp.184,187). A half a year after the springtime 1942 Doolittle bombing of Tokyo, three captured airmen were sentences and killed. Dower’s War Without Mercy devotes a whole chapter on, "Primitives, Children, Madmen," of both accepted and over psychiatric inquiry of the Japanese culture.1 and 6
As a compassion, within the war Japan commonly exemplified themselves as the champion race of the globe. Much-like their U.S. and allied counterparts, they called on a assortment of allegories, illustrations, secret wording, and approaches to maintain their desired power; which encompassed different expressions that degraded non-Japanese people and societies. [p. 203] The author analyzed with great points about Japanese representation of themselves as a human race and empire, more equivalent, flawless, and separate from others. We see this in the depiction of the “Rising Sun” and how it was fashioned as a emblem of a purifying authority, such as the cartoon, reproduced in War Without Mercy, from the winter of 1942 issue of the Japanese periodical Manga. As described by Dower: The purifying sun of Japanese glory dispels, the “ABCD” powers. Then as we notice China was a sprawled out figure of Chiang Kai-shek's face with a short tail, a brutish symbol often attached to the nationalist of China. All that remained of the Dutch was a wooden shoe. (p. 192) Their friendship with Germany and Italy created a propaganda operation of definite anti-white discrimination that was somewhat idealistic. Nevertheless, Japan was not above using comparisons of their own citizens and other European people. Additionally, there were well-known books on racial matters that were written and published in Tokyo during 1944. People that read, A History of Changing Theories about the Japanese by Kiyono Kenji were once again faced with this type of imagery. (p. 219) Furthermore, the Japanese authorities professed a desire for the realization of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which united countries in the whole area, it was understood that Tokyo was to be the paramount commercial and military power.1
The most prevalent means used to illustrate people from Europe in Japanese cartoons during the time-period was demons. An additional rendering from Manga shows a head of rice raging with sharp blades similar to the samurai swords, pierce a few U.S. airmen plunged from a fiery bomber. In 1981 the disclosure of a large group of W.W.II records located in a used-book reserve in Tokyo, Japan led to the discovery of the complete six-volume report, finished in the summer 1943, titled: Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato [Japanese] Race Nucleus. This strange, yet invaluable document was the subject of one whole chapter by Dower, he illustrated about Japan’s parallel to "blood and soil," and biased patterns of thought. However, Dower only casually touches on the associations between National Socialist and Japan’s ancestral, monetary, and governmental theories. Another failings in War Without Mercy involves the author's random one-dimensional remarks regarding Japanese’s National Socialist allies. Dower then describes in a particularly telling section of his work: besides the genocide during the Holocaust, which was forced on Jews, racism remains one of the great ignored matters of the Second World War. We should then gain an understanding of its seriousness. Dower does demonstrate its become more extensively acknowledged in modern years, the extinction of eastern Jewry itself was not an isolated event, but to some degree, in my opinion was curiously German hatred toward God-Yahweh’s chosen people. The German eradication campaign wasn’t confined to Jews but was directed at other "undesirable" humans too.1
It has been well documented that anti-Semitism in both America and Britain stopped both nations from helping as much as they could to broadcast these genocidal behaviors or to mobilize a joint rescue operation.

(p. 4) Dower acknowledged that warfare in the Pacific was particularly harsh with both side frequently killing imprisoned enemy soldiers rather than keeping them as prisoners, and the collection of human remains of enemy for mementos was typical. He also showed the brutal Japanese treatment of whites and Asians in wartime camps and the Americans' internment of over 100,000 Japanese/American people. If he had discussed Japanese anti-Jewish and pro-Muslim attitudes and a more equal comparison of battle brutalities in the Pacific region, and some on the Eastern Front would have given the reader a greater comprehension. Overall, Dower’s work was thoroughly researched and was a innovation in acknowledgment of W.W.II propaganda in the Pacific

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Wayne E. Mattison

End Notes

1. Wikoff, Jack [Reviewed by]. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. By John W. Dower. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. From The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87 (Vol. 7, No. 4), pages 483-488. Copyright 2013-2015 Institute for Historical Review. ??/ ??/ 2015. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p483_Wikoff.html

2. Miles, Hannah. WWII Propaganda: The Influence of Racism. Published by the Campus Writing Program. Copyright © 2015 Curators of the University of Missouri. [Figure 1: This is the Enemy. Maximum Advantage in Pictures: Propaganda as Art and History, March 2, 2010. http://chumpfish3.blogspot.com/2010/03/this-is-enemy.html. Accessed October 1, 2010.] ??/??/2015.
https://artifactsjournal.missouri.edu/2012/03/wwii-propaganda-the-influence-of-racism/

3.

Popular items for ww ii. © 2015 Etsy, Inc. ??/??/2015. https://www.etsy.com/market/ww_ii

4. Richards, Lee. PsyWar Leaflet Archive. Copyright Lee Richards 1997-2015. psywar.org/. ??/??/2015. http://www.psywar.org/leaflets.php

5. Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon, 1993. (Google Books). ??/??/2015. Pages. 4-5, 9, 10, 15-17, 27-28, 29-31, 36-37, 46, 48-49, 57-58, 71, 72-73, 75, 82, 86, 88, 90, 92, 103-104, 113, 114-115, 117, 126, 132, 139-140, 146, 150, 152, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 163, 164, 166-168, 171-172, 174-175, 176, 177, 179, 205-208, 217-218, 230-231, 244-246, 249-250, 284-285, 314-315, 322-323, 343, 345, 382, 390, 395, 398, 411-412,
https://books.google.com/books?id=8himI4wNnxEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

6. Ibid., Dower, pps. 95, 110-151-152, 155, 332-[Punch, January 14, 1942], 343, 375, 392,

6. Dower, John. War without Mercy: PACIFIC WAR. (Google eBook). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Mar 28, 2012. ??/??/2015. Pages…..

https://books.google.com/books?id=rlBaxUX7QhYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false