The evidence in my family seems to indicate that my Pennsylvania Dutch great-grandma had some knowledge of the German language based on her book collection, some of which survives, but otherwise it seems she lived in an English speaking world and was more or less Anglo in behavior at least from the 1930’s, attending school in New Jersey and marrying a very Anglo guy.
Again, my Grandmother.
She grew up is Stuttgart, Arkansas. She loved the German people there and thought the language beautiful, but firmly believed that the mariners of the WWI German Q-ships ate babies.
Two good friends of mine in college were from the small town of Berlin, Wisconsin. The local pronunciation of the town’s name is BER-lin; allegedly, it was originally pronounced ber-LIN, as the German capital is, but the town changed the pronunciation during WWI, due to anti-German sentiment, and it was never changed back.
Maudlin’s point was that no matter how you slice it they were fighting Germans. Trying to frame the war as one against Nazis but not against Germans was bullshit.
Slightly off-topic, but just fyi the strength of feeling remains strong here in China, IME.
Many people here will take every opportunity to tell me how much they hate the Japanese (including my girlfriend, despite previously telling me this many times). A number reasons for that come up, but everyone mentions the atrocities in WWII, and the lack of apology or even acknowledgement.
The only time I have ever encountered any animosity toward the Japanese was when I was a kid, in the 50s. The war was over only 10 years earlier, and many of the kids had parents who were affected by it. Both anti-German and anti-Japanese sentiments were common back then . . . but seemed to abate by the time the 60s came around. The only exception I’ve seen would be some Jewish-Americans will not buy products from Germany. I had a VW Rabbit in the 70s, and my (Jewish) mother wouldn’t ride in it.
I too know people who lived through the war and still hate the Japanse. I don’t see that at all on younger people.
I personally hate Japanese porn because of all the crying women.
What is with that?
I dunno, but it’s bizarre, and about as big a turnoff as I can imagine.
My dad fought in the European theater in WWII. Interestingly, he bought at least two Volkswagons but would never own a Japanese car. Not sure if that was related more to the war or to the perceptions of German vs Japanese manufacturing quality in the 1970s.
My 90-year-old mother would occasionally make disparaging remarks about the Japanese. When I asked her for her reason, she said, “You don’t know the terrible things they did in the war!” My response, “But, Mom! You’re German!” Her father was American-born to German immigrants in a heavily German area of Ohio. In fact, her father used to listen in the 1930’s to radio broadcasts of Hitler. He was fluent in German although his children never learned the language. She seems to have softened her attitude considerably in more recent years now that I’ve been working for a Japanese auto manufacturer.
Do many Japanese still hate Americans? After all, it was Japan who attacked the US.
In the late 80s, I went with a group of senior citizens to Hawaii. As part of our activities, we toured Pearl Harbor, and took a boat to the memorial over the USS Arizona.
A number of Japanese tourists were on the boat as well, and several of the men in our group (all of whom had served in WWII) were bothered by this. Mutterings of “They shouldn’t be allowed to go to this memorial” and such were heard. Fortunately nothing overt happened.
It’s almost exclusively a generational attitude. There’s no question that the Japanese committed horrible war crimes (including cannibalism of some U.S. airmen, not to mention the atrocities in Nanking and other areas of China), and they took their own sweet time acknowledging their mistakes and transgressions after the war ended. For decades, though, they’ve been an ally of the U.S., and I doubt many folks under the age of 50 feel hatred toward them.
My Father-in-law muttered similarly at one time. He was a pilot during the war, stationed in Hawaii and went on to live the for a while in later years. It took a long time for him to accept the idea of Japanese tourist visiting the memorial. I’m sure he felt like they were perhaps gloating in some way or coming to see the glory of their countrymen, how could he not?
Eventually he came to accept and even respect the Japanese tourists. The memorial is an education for both sides. If I remember correctly, the men who work there are veterans and they set the tone of tolerance. Besides, if Japanese tourists weren’t allowed at the Arizona memorial it would be half full.
I’ve hesitated to post this - because the experience hit me very hard and is likely to be misunderstood. Background - I grew up in California in the 1950s. My best friend was Japanese. Her parents and grandparents were interred. She whispered stories about the lost businesses, homes and the pain but said her parents told her not to talk about it because it would shame them and us.
I did not learn about the Japanese war atrocities until much later. For some reason I found them more difficult to accept than the Holocaust in Europe. I think it was because I could never reconcile the horror of the experiments and treatment of prisoners with my gentle friend and her family while my German relatives always seemed a bit stern and angry. Who knows.
Anyway, I’d never seen any racial hatred for the Japanese in myself or any desire for revenge. And t hen when the tsunami hit, I had a deep visceral reaction of “well, I guess karma is a bitch. They got what they deserved.” I was shocked, ashamed, appalled – where did that come from? I do not believe in karma at all. And I certainly don’t believe in inter-generational guilt.
But there it was, on a deep emotional level. Somehow, I hadn’t forgiven the Japanese for Pearl Harbor, for the “medical experiments,” for their treatment of the Chinese, for the suicide bombing. Why they should need my forgiveness is beyond me. I was shaken with weeping. So I did the only thing I could do - I confessed my unforgiveness. I repented of my buried hostility. And I spoke out words of forgiveness and blessing, for their tormented role in the sad history of human failings.
Perhaps, somewhere, there was a hurting Japanese soul who wanted to be forgiven and I served as a proxy? Perhaps my heartfelt words reached their spirit. I know I needed to be forgiven for hatred and unforgiveness I didn’t even know I had harbored.
Again, not sure how this relates to the op other than to point out that sometimes we have racial (or other) hatreds deeply buried of which we are unaware.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was not motivated by hatred; it was a military strike aimed at preventing the US from interfering in Japan’s imperial dominance of southeast Asia.
I’m 25, and while we sometimes think that they can be a little odd (the questionable sexual fetishes come to mind), there isn’t any hatred that I know of.
True, but the Japanese government had its own propaganda, the US did kill millions of their citizens, destroyed much of their infrastructure (including housing), and drop two atomic bombs - for many Japanese to hate Americans for long after the war would be understandable.
So I guess what I’m now asking… was there a reciprocal “counter-hatred” of Japanese towards Americans following WW2? I honestly don’t know.
It looks like this incident didn’t particularly contribute. Racism, discrimination against Asians, including Japanese, hysteria, greed and other causes were much larger factors.
From a military and industrial point of view, Germany was a much bigger threat to the world. Japan had only 10% of the US industrial strength at the start of the war, while Germany had a larger percentage, and about the same size as the USSR, larger than that of the UK, IIRC.
This is incorrect. The US had placed direct sanctions on Japan for her invasion of China, with a crippling oil embargo and freezing assets. That had wide spread support within the administration, with the notable exception of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, whose branch of service would bear the brunt of the fight. Both of these men wanted to wait until the US was in a better position to fight, but they got overturned.
Nope. Except for a decreasing number of people who were directly affected and some idiots.
Google US war propaganda and look at images. Compare the posters against the Japanese and against the Nazis. Note that it’s against the “Japs” and Nazis.
There are plenty of quotes from that period which would support that. General Halsey’s quote is probably the best known.
Interestingly, I’ve read that the hate by Chinese is much higher now than immediately after the war. The contention by many is that the Chinese government is deliberately fueling the antagonism.
No. There wasn’t.
At the beginning of the war, there was a lot of celebration in Japan because of the successes, but it seems to be less motivated by hatred to Americans than pride.
Later, as things got worse and worse, the Japanese civilians were cowed enough that they just tried to survive.
Most Japanese were just happy to get the war over, and they blamed the military. Both my exwife’s mother and father were lucky to survive firebombing in Tokyo (the big one for the ex-MIL and another separate one for the ex-FIL) and they absolutely no animosity against Americans.
I was in Japan in the early 1980s as a young Mormon missionary and never ran into any, even from people who were directly affected. A lady in Nagasaki, and a survivor of the atomic bombing took me to to see The Day After, which was released as a movie in Japan and cried a bit. Hit too close to home.
Mostly, I’d hear stories about people reacting to Americans, but looking back most of them were friends of friends stuff, classical urban legend territory.
Most of younger Japanese aren’t getting detailed history of WWII. For them, they were bombed and the war ended, but nothing about how it started. No hatred toward the US, though.
I think it contributed quite a bit to the existing fear and hysteria.