My Grandmother lost a son in the War and certainly dislike all things Japanese.
A friend of a friend described his Father lying on a beach with an eye hanging out of socket, playing dead while Japanese soldiers shot his wounded comrades who certainly hated everything Japanese. I believe hatred, dislike, prejudice stems from the Second World War, and became less as time passed.
It is hard to get over members of a group messing with you or your family.
Before Pearl Harbor we were supporting the British against the Germans through Lend Lease. There were some economic sanctions against Japan, but nothing so blatant. And FDR definitely gave first priority to the European theater.
I believe the bomb would have been used against Germany first if it had been ready before VE day.
Good point, Imperial Japan for some reason isn’t used as a ‘popular’ enemy like Nazis these days for some reason, even though they were equally unpleasant in a lot of ways. As mentioned above their POW camps for Americans were not dissimilar to how the Nazis treated their Soviet POWs, and the Bataan Death March early on in the war sure went some way to explain why ordinary Marines hated the Japanese.
That’s what I would have thought too, but this moron who posted about the tsunami was only 19. I know there’s an easy explanation - these people are just idiots, but does it speak to a wider lingering underlying trauma in the American psyche?
More than a few, less than a lot. Hope that clears it up. For instance, in 2011 I was surprised even one assclown would still be pissed of about Pearl Harbor but enough posted about it to get the attention of media.
The bigger threat, but not hated as much as the Japanese. In Europe GI’s were just professionals with a job to get done against other professionals, I reckon Marines in the Pacific had a more…personal hatred of the enemy. Could be wrong, but it’s always the impression I’ve got.
Certainly.
Einstein et al attempted to prevent the atom bomb being used after Germany surrendered.
There’s always going to be some morons out there who say really, really dumb things during a tragedy. Wasn’t it Pat Robertson who said Haiti got blasted by that last hurricane because of a pact they made with the devil?
You can always find interent comment section trolls who will say 911 victims / school shooting victims / tornado victims / etc. “dezervd what thy got! lol #pwnd!”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Europe First was a stupid policy - it was based on sound practical and political reasons. But I think Americans at the time viewed the Nazis as “Another fine European mess, let’s get this over with” and the Japanese as “Sucker-punching, prisoner torturing barbarians who we should wipe off the face of the Earth”
My understanding is that the Japanese during WWII “Had no concept of surrender”. When a GI would come across an injured Japanese soldier and be met with a suicidal grenade, it tends to change one’s perspective. Even more so when they dropped their own mores forged in European wars and wallowed in what were considered war crimes. That sort of stuff tends to break minds. I trust I’m not representing Japanese wartime practices comprehensively, but judging from this account I don’t think I’m far off. At any rate, as US GI’s from the Pacific don’t like to talk to much about their experiences during the war, this sort of enmity didn’t spread virulently throughout US society.
Another straw in the wind was a New Yorker piece published immediately after the war addressing Hiroshima. That helped shift elite views of the Japanese, as of course did cold war necessities.
No. Once again, there really is almost no anti-Japanese sentiment in America. If you live in America, it’s never too long before you hear someone who expresses intense dislike towards black people, or Hispanic people, or even French people. You just don’t run into those types of strong feelings when it comes to Japanese people. In fact, the only time I ever hear racist people talking about Japan is when they’re praising it as an example of how having an ethnically homogeneous population leads to having a successful country.
Those “The tsunami was payback for Pearl Harbor” posts were mostly just tasteless jokes that were intended to be shocking and offensive so that they would garner lots of attention.
Yeah, I’ve heard no hatred against the Japanese, especially compared to what the Germans still get. Germans are still regularly called Nazis; I’ve never heard any Americans reference Japan’s wartime record in anger.
I once met a person who told me that she had been on a motorcycle tour around Scotland. One night they stayed at a small B&B. The landlady told them that they couldn’t have anything to eat as it was her husband who cooked and he was away over the weekend, but they didn’t mind as there were a couple of eateries in the town. Anyway, the next morning she asked them what motorcycles they had and when they told her “That is a German BMW and that is a Japanese <whatever>” etc she turned very pale and said “It’s a good thing that my husband is away. You would have been thrown out if he had seen you motorcycles”. It turned out that his father and two or three uncles had all died during the war and his hatred for anything German or Japanese was very much alive. This happened some time in the 90s.
My immediate reaction was, “that’s insane – especially two generations after, when those who made said motorcycles would have been born long after war’s end. War is, largely, a continuation of diplomacy by other means: personal hatred between those involved at a low level, doesn’t have to be part of it.” However – people feel the way that they feel, and can’t necessarily set that aside easily, or at all.
Probably because this country and its current society is young, we as a whole, don’t carry on grudges for wars past. A lot of countries do though. I have not travelled the pacific rim or east asia much but in europe I noticed that they did to a certain extant. Maybe this was obvious to me for our lack of it but it was hard to not hear a conversation about this war or that or some country did that some hundreds of years ago. Or, wistful recollection when our country was part of this empire so and so. Maybe it’s just their form of “water cooler” talk but I have not seen that practice in the US.
So, no, I don’t think you’ll find a large population of people lamenting about any country in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or even first “Gulf War”. Probably, noteven for this current conflict (Gulf War II).
We understand that its the “machine” that drives a war and that most of said countrys’ people are not usually involved. We get more angry at the “machine” (politicians, etc) then we do at the country we are in a conflict with. But, we all do hate specific groups or organizations, like Al Queda. Not too many supporters of them here at all.
American here. This is pretty much accurate. Americans generally believe that Japan and Germany both saw the errors of their ways and reformed themselves and are now close allies. The wisdom seems to be that a hypothetical future World War 3 will involve an alliance of the US, Germany, Japan, the British Commonwealth countries, and a few others against some other force, either Communist (e.g. DPRK and PRC), or Islamist (e.g. a hypothetical future Caliphate or pan-Islamic alliance waging overt holy war).
The fear that the US will fight a future war with Japan pales in comparison to the fear that there will be a war with China - which is looking less and less likely every year.
It was. Bill Maudlin (Stars and Stripes cartoonist attached to the infantry during WWII) wrote in his book Up Front that most of the soldiers didn’t like hearing that they weren’t fighting Germans they were fighting Nazis. No, Bill wrote, other than a crack SS division in Italy I haven’t seen any Nazis.
As for the Japanese: I worked in a military museum and one day a visitor asked me “How do you feel about all those Jap cars you see on the road today?” So there’s still some people who don’t like Japan for whatever reason.
Other than flat out racist against anyone who isn’t them types (and these people are much rarer than people try to make you think) there’s not a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment out there.
Maybe some trumped up crap when someone dares to abbreviate Japanese as Jap because OMGOSH that’s what they said in nasty propaganda decades before you were born.
My grandfather was a Bataan Death March survivor. Fucking hated the Japanese.
I’ve only encountered anti-Japanese sentiments coming from men of my father’s generation. Male WWII vets.
Those German soldiers were fighting on behalf of a Nazi government, so yeah, they WERE fighting the Nazis.
I don’t and I’m of Korean descent. I’m an anime/manga fan and find Japanese women quite attractive. My parents (and their generation) not so much (although OTOH they have no problem using Japanese products or watching Japanese movies/TV shows/whatever
I do, but it’s more a function of my ex-brother-in-law being a world-class asshole more than anything else.