I’ve always been interested in the American view of their participation in WWII; reading about it always gives me the impression that contemporary Americans viewed the war against Nazi Germany as a bit of unpleasantness they had to get out of the way before they settled accounts with the real enemy, Imperial Japan.
Hastings in Armageddon relates a few American soldiers on the attitudes to Germany versus Japan (at least until the death camps were discovered); “I never hated the Germans as I hated the Japanese”…“The Germans were just soldiers like us”
Japanese-Americans were infamously interned and propaganda against Japan was blatantly racist. This attitude reared its ugly head in the aftermath of the recent tsunami, where many jackasses proclaimed that it was ‘karma’ for Pearl Harbor.
How prevalent in modern America is this type of racism/xenophobia against Japan?
That type of racism / xenophobia against Japan? No, I have never encountered it.
Those little nips knew when they were beaten, even if it took two nukes to convince them. They’ve been behaving themselves since then, except for the Eighties when they were going to buy or out produce all of our industries.
I would say that the vast majority of people today don’t view the Japan of today or its people as the same Japan that we fought in WWII. There was plenty of hatred for the imperialist Japan of that era (and rightfully so I believe) but almost everyone recognizes that the post WWII era and its reconstruction changed Japan and its people in many fundamental ways (and westernized it to some degree) so the old feelings don’t really carry over. Much the same thing is true with Germany.
(I am not sure exactly what they standard racist American view of the Japanese is today. I suspect it is “corporate drone with bizarre sexual fetishes on his off-hours” for men and “subservient plaything” for women. But don’t quote me on that.)
This is a complex issue. I don’t know anyone personally who hated the Japanese, but I have read of ex-POWs who were in the Japanese prison camps who still did, years after the war. From many reports, the Japanese treated their POWs worse than the Germans did. the German concentration camps were more than brutal, but their treatment of POWs, while not ideal, was much, much better.
Propaganda always dehumanize the enemy, and all combatants were ruthlessly caricatured. In the first World War the Germans were almost depicted as subhuman “Huns” (I don’t recall anything quite as severe from WWII). It’s true that anti-Japanese propaganda had an element of racism, but I doubt if that is what made people have strong anti-Japanese feelings.
Um… no. If anything, my experience has been that many Americans have a great fascination with Japan and their history. And no, I’m not just talking about their cartoons.
I’ve never experienced anything resembling anti-Japanese sentiment.
Racism as depicted in the OP–never seen it. I don’t even remember it as a kid in the 70s/80s when there were still quite a few WWII survivors around. There was plenty of animosity about Japanese industry displacing US goods, but we kind of brought that on ourselves by embracing planned obsolescence for so long.
I do know someone who works for a Japanese company, and his management is all in Japan. He can’t stand them, they drive him nuts. But it’s mostly cultural & language barriers that aggravate him. He couldn’t care less about Pearl Harbor or WWII atrocities committed by guys who are long-since dead. Frankly I think Germany still gets more afterglow hate that Japan.
I was listening to podcast the other day and the daughter of the guy doing it admitted she did not know the significance of Pearl Harbor, she is 20. That caught me off guard as I imagine that age group maybe does not know much about Japan and Pearl Harbor. Hmmmmm
that said, Japan attacked us without provocation and that alone created some deeply felt ill feelings about Japan, its leadership and its soldiers.
Actually, the more common attitude was that Nazi Germany was the real enemy and that the Japanese war was a secondary conflict which conveniently allowed FDR to take on Hitler. However, the personal/racial dislike… it was aimed moreso at the Japanese, obviously.
For the 30 years after WW2, dislike of the Japanese slowly subsided because Japan was well and truly beaten. In addition, hundreds of thousands of GI’s visited during the Korean conflict, and their positive experiences there (it was the only part of the Korean war my Dad ever talked about) did a lot to improve relations. Also, the location of the islands made the country a valuable ally against the USSR (and, I assume the hope is, China (if it ever comes to that)), so there was little to no promotion of anti-Japanese sentiment by the US government after WW2.
In the 80s we were worried that the Japanese were buying all of our real estate and destroying our car industry. However, we realized that the car industry had no problem destroying itself and that its problems with Japanese competition had more to do with Ford/GM/Chrysler than Nissan/Toyota/Honda. Then the Soviet bloc blew up, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and by the time we got around to thinking about Japan again, the country (Japan) was in the midst of a decades-long recession and wasn’t “buying America” any longer.
Today? When the earthquake/tsunami hit, there was no “we can’t help those guys because of Pearl Harbor” attitude… hell, PH was 70+ years ago. US aid wasn’t as strong as it was for Haiti, but the prevailing sentiment was that Haiti needed it more and Japan was strong enough (and integrated enough in the global economic system) to withstand the disaster.
I’m in my 40s and I don’t see it with my generation or younger generations.
Possibly a bit more with older generations with the “Buy American!” attitude who will never buy a Japanese car or motorcycle.
Most people I know my age or younger love Japanese brands (Toyota, Honda, Sony, Nintendo) and Japanese culture wether authentic or westernized (Japanese steakhouses, Japanese animation, Godzilla!)
The US has plenty of minorities and as far as ranking bigoted hate against them I think the Japanese fall to the bottom of the list. Much more hate for Hispanics, Black, Muslim, Native American, etc. than Japanese IMHO.
I’m 59 YO and knew people who lived during WWII that held grudges against the Japanese. For example they would NOT buy Datsuns or Toyotas. I remember my father, a WWII vet, telling a salesman that he wanted a radio but not a POS Jap radio. As my father’s generation dies out, this altitude will also.
Don’t forget that a similar thing happened to the Germans during and after WWI. Both the city I was born in and another 300 miles away where I live now were heavily populated with German immigrants. People still spoke German and there were German language newspapers pre-war. Once the War to End All Wars (yea right) started, the newspapers went away and people spoke English more. My immigrant grandparents could speak German but seldom did. People went so far as to change their first and last names to a more English sounding version. Part of it was that they wanted to be seen as truly American. The flip side was that many did NOT want to be seen as Germans.
In my youth I worked with a guy who was a POW. His arm was still disfigured. He was the victim of some serious war crimes. Yes he absolutely hated the Japanese. I couldn’t really fault him for it.
Agreed. People who were actually alive during WWII might still harbor some of those attitudes, but there simply aren’t as many of them anymore. My father was a kid during the war, and he turns 80 next week. Americans who were actually adults during the war (including those who fought in it) are in their late 80s, at the youngest.
Indeed – my father gave me a bit of good-natured grief when I bought a Mazda, 20 years ago.
“Why would you buy a Japanese car?”
“Because my last two cars were American-made, Dad, and they were both crap!”
I think he grudgingly admitted that I had a point, but he wasn’t happy about it. OTOH, he really likes my new Mustang.
That was a very big fear in the 1980s, when Japan’s economy was roaring along, and they gained a reputation for high-quality products (mostly electronics and autos), after many years of the stereotype of producing cheap merchandise.
I really haven’t seen much of that attitude / paranoia in a long time, however – Japan’s economy has been in bad shape for a while now, and any such fears are probably now more focused on China.
I remember reading an article a while back during the earlier 2000s on terrorism and kamikaze attacks, where a veteran specifically stated that suicide bombings were not at-all the same. He very respectfully made the distinction that the Japanese were honorable soldiers in all-out war, and not just haphazardly targeting civilians, or something of that nature. Either way, he thought highly of them, despite being bitter enemies at one point.
To add to this, there are many Japanese tourists to the Hawaiin islands, and there is a lot of culture often borrowed or influenced between us two, among other things.
My father fought in WW II, in Europe, and I don’t recall him every saying anything against the Japanese.
Back in the '80s when we worried that Japan Inc. was eating our lunch, there was admiration and concern, but I never heard any hatred. I’m sure there are some nuts out there, but not many.
I first lived in Japan in 1981 to 1983 and have been going back and forth since then, for a total of 20 some odd years. I’d always make it back to the States and I talked to many, many people about Japan and the Japanese. I heard plenty of mistaken stereotypes but not any real bigoted people.
To be fair, when the Japanese started manufacturing radios, they were pieces of shit. It was only later that their products become better.
Yeah, my grandfather was a WWII vet, European theater, and he was an early adopter of Japanese automobiles. He had a Datsun in the late 70s, I think. Of course, he was stationed in Japan in the 50s. Maybe that had something to do with it.
