Let me try this again... [Has technology surpassed our humanity & was the Pacific war about racism?]

Great Debates
61

IRT Dissonance - The Old Breed sounds very interesting however I think the brief excerpt was enough for me but thank you for posting it.

I’m certainly not quibbling on whether or not there was racism on the part of some but I think it’s clear it wasn’t a primary motivation.

I would agree with another poster who said there is a greater correlation to a nationalistic racism on the part of the Germans and the Japanese but would also agree with yet another who said wars are primarily for resources and enrichment regardless of stated ideologies.

Re: charges of racism in US foreign policy, it is recurring meme, most recently I recall Nelson Mandela leveling the charge against the US at the beginning of GW2. I wonder what is made of the US’s continuing support of Israel (outside of the obvious charges) considering Israel in comprised of a variety of backgrounds, including Israelis of Arab and Persian backgrounds

I can’t thank you all enough for your responses as they have been very educational.

62

Again, I do not think that Tom Hanks’s clipped statement was intended to indicate the motivation for the war, simply an observation regarding the conduct of the war. His statement (based on my reading) seems to be pretty accurate.

One thing about racism is that even when it affects conduct, it rarely has the strength to override personal interest. There are few instances in history when a deliberate malevolent act was carried out solely to fullfill some racist fantasy. The Holocaust/Shoah is probably one clear example where it did occur. However, there are many examples of racsim simply pushing a decision one way or another or even racism being set aside for more practical pursuits (at least until the goal is accomplished, after which the racism might reassert itself). The destruction of the native nations in North America had rather more to do with a desire for land than the need to kill the Indians. That the Indians were generally considered less than human simply made massacres and other outrages easier to accept when they happened. Similarly, whites were quite capable of forming alliances with Indian nations for the purpose of suppressing different Indian nations. Of course, once the “enemies” were suppressed, the “allies” were liable to be treated every bit as shamefully–as happened to the U.S.'s allies in the Creek wars in the early nineteenth century.

Other accusations of racsim can be matters of simply choosing when to help or when to stay out of a conflict. Why, for example, was there no effort to halt the Hutu/Tutsi disaster in Africa, while a lot of energy was expended to halt the Serbian attacks on its neighbors? Without arguing each and every incident, (most of which have conflicting issues alongside racism), noting that WWII in the Pacific was a war of racism, (meaning that once joined, both sides allowed racist decisions to affect their conduct), is not a startling or outrageous claim–it is simply a fact.

63

Since I was the one who brought up strafing survivors (I think), I just wanted to note that I wasn’t particularly thinking of the Bismarck Sea but rather a general practice by both sides. The order to attack the floating survivors and life rafts in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea was given because they were soldiers being transported to New Guinea, and the action can be given some justification to a greater or lesser degree on the grounds that they would arrive as reinforcements. As examples of strafing survivors as a more general practice, for instance from A Glorious Way to Die

and from volume 5 of S. E. Morison’s History of US Naval Operations in WWII describing the aftermath of the previous night’s savage naval battle off of Guadalcanal on Nov 13, 1942 - a Friday, of course.

By way of contrast, the British didn’t spend very much time taking on survivors from the sunken battleship Bismarck out of fear of U-boats operating in the area, but neither did they machine-gun the German survivors.

64

I don’t get your last point. Why was it racist to fight back after being attacked and declaring war? I think that was one war that would have dragged out for a long time. Was it because we used the Atomic Bomb rather then hand to hand combat? I grew up in the 70’s and the Viet Nam war went on forever. One thing about the Asians is they don’t surrender. Also with Viet Nam’s terrain a Bomb would have been easier. I don’t understand our new war strategy? Why have all this technology at our hands and not use it?

Off topic- Why don’t we ever see what is happening over in Afghanistan? Where is the coverage on the news? We used to see more of the war when we had much less in media advancements. I know there are a lot of troops over there. It is like we are having this invisible war you don’t hear about much? If I do see the troops on tv it is not of them engaged in battle.

65

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Far_From_the_Bamboo_Grove

This is the sort of stuff many school districts force down the throats of it’s students (though thankfully not ours). Would a novel about a German family in East Prussia who go west to Germany at the end of World War 2 be approved by a school district for children who don’t know anything about World War 2 or the Holocaust?

66

Have you actually reead what I have posted?
I support (and have supported in this thread) that the U.S. was correct in responding to the Japanese offensive with war–even to reducing Japan to a dependent state not capable of waging war.

However, there is a separate issue regarding racism and terror. It was racism that caused U.S. troops to routinely kill Japanese prisoners; it was racism that encouraged the U.S. to place the entire ethnic Japanese population of the West Coast, (including U.S. citizens), in concentration camps while the equivalent populations of Germans, Italians, and related European foes were interned only if they were individually examined and deemed to be a threat or a foreign national. The fire bombings of Japanese cities was a terror weapon–one brought to the Pacific by Curtis LeMay’s namesake once he was out from under Hap Arnold’s control and could emulate his hero, Bomber Harris.

I have made no claim that either the racism or the terror in which the U.S. engaged was as bad as that practiced by the Japanese Army, but I reject the attempts to whitewash our actions with claims that it never happened or that it was unavoidable.

67

I have no idea what you are attempting to assert, here.

That some school districts might use a work that happened to show the children of a former enemy in a less than hateful light does not seem to have anything to do with whether the U.S., itself, engaged in racism or terror during the war. It is also hardly an example of Japanese “imperial apologists.” It is one story of one family in the midst of a horrendous war. Since it is told in the first person from the perspective of an 11 year old girl, I am not sure just how much information she is supposewd to have had concerning the Rape of Nanking or Korean comfort women. I’m sure that banning it will make you happy, but you might consider that the Japanese Army is treated as a hostile force by the fleeing family, (since the military separates the family to keep the son working in a munitions factory).

68

First of all it’s not “banned” just not required reading plus as World War II Korea is a fairly obscure topic for most kids it would be gravely misleading if this was the first book they read regarding it.

69

So what? It has nothing to do with the topic of this thread and it fails to support any of the odd and erroneus claims you have made, previously. It is simply one more little burr under your saddle that you believe you need to tell us about, even if it has no meaning.

70

It serves indirectly as apologia for Imperial Japan. Plus I have cited Howard Zinn as an another example.

71

How, precisely, does a novel about a young girl fleeing her childhood home serve “indirectly” :dubious: as an apologia? It’s a story. It’s not history. Some children are - though one can’t prove it by you - capable of telling the difference between stories and history.

72

Piffle.

A story of a young girl suffering from the horrors of war does not serve as an “apologia” for the country in which she lives. It might serve to humanize one’s “enemies,” always a bad thing to do when one needs to keep them dehumanized 70 years after the events, but it does not justify or excuse the actions of the nation.

Zinn is not an apologist for imperial Japan. Zinn has a perspective that is antagonistic to the U.S., (particularly to the view of the U.S. that always places us in white hats), but he does not provide an “apologia” for Japan.

If Zinn and Watkins are the most you can come up with, then you have proven my point.

73

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
However, there is a separate issue regarding racism and terror. It was racism that caused U.S. troops to routinely kill Japanese prisoners; it was racism that encouraged the U.S. to place the entire ethnic Japanese population of the West Coast, (including U.S. citizens), in concentration camps while the equivalent populations of Germans, Italians, and related European foes were interned only if they were individually examined and deemed to be a threat or a foreign national. The fire bombings of Japanese cities was a terror weapon–one brought to the Pacific by Curtis LeMay’s namesake once he was out from under Hap Arnold’s control and could emulate his hero, Bomber Harris.
[/QUOTE]

By and large, I agree (though I think that the Japanese were far more racist than the American’s were…and I also think that people are underplaying the level of racism that happened in the European theater as well), but you imply by ‘It was racism that caused U.S. troops to routinely kill Japanese prisoners’ that this happened a lot. The fact was, though, that the Japanese DIDN’T surrender very often…and when they did (or were to wounded and luckless to have their own mates whack them first), they were as likely to hand an American or a Brit a grenade as to peacefully submit to becoming a prisoner. There were cases where the Japanese fanatically died to the last man in many of the island campaigns in the Pacific, especially early on…and, later, it was almost ingrained for the American’s to simply kill all Japanese, regardless.

I’m not trying to imply that there wasn’t a heavy racist element on the part of America here, but I think that on this point, there weren’t really all that many instances where racially motivated American’s were whacking poor, defenseless surrendering Japanese troops (really, it was more the converse, since we DID surrender quite often, especially early on). I know, based on my own reading, that this unwillingness to surrender was a serious concern to the American brass, who weren’t sure what it would take (if anything) to finally make the Japanese throw in the towel and surrender.

-XT

74

When the General staff (late 1943? early 1944?) decided that they were not getting enough information from captured prisoners, they sent out explicit orders to stop killing them. The ratio of Japanese dead to captured changed, dramatically, from 100:1 to 7:1. It is pretty far fetched to guess that the Japanese heard about the order and began surrendering in higher numbers. It would be a bit more likely that we simply stopped shooting them as often.

I have already stated that Japanese barbarism and racism was more extreme than that of the U.S. However, claims that they made us do it undermine an appreciation of what actually happened.

75

Do you have a cite for that? I was always under the impression that in most of the Pacific Island hopping campaigns that the Japanese refused to surrender, and that the only prisoners we usually got were those to wounded to either kill themselves or to attack their captors and force them to do the job for them.

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
I have already stated that Japanese barbarism and racism was more extreme than that of the U.S. However, claims that they made us do it undermine an appreciation of what actually happened.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I’m not trying to imply that the US troops (and the government, as per your point about the internment camps) didn’t have a huge racial motivation for atrocities committed against the Japanese.

-XT

76

I got the time frame wrong, but I found a citation in a Wikipedia article on a related subject:
Niall Ferguson, “Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat”, War in History, 2004, 11 (2): P. 150

Ferguson was probably the source of my memory, but it has been a while since I read him.

77

Ok, thanks for the cite. I’m unsure how to reconcile this with what I’ve read in the past. My impression was that the number of Japanese prisoners when up in the last stages of the war due more to the fact that it became apparent to the Japanese troops that the situation was hopeless, and they began to be disillusioned with the whole Bushido ‘death before surrender!’ thing, than that it was due to American troops being bribed with ice cream to take them. I guess I’ll have to do some digging on this, but appreciate the cite.

-XT

78

Tom,

I thought you made some excellent points. I agreed with most of them except the racism part. I did not see the Tom Hanks movie so I don’t know what angle the movie was trying to show. Maybe I’m just uneducated but they bombed the crap out of us during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. I saw that footage all through my childhood. We lost a lot of men and we acted. What is wrong with making quick work of getting the enemy to surrender? Why do we need to spend years on a two day job? We had the technology then as we do now.

We were racist because of how we treated the Japanese POW’s right after they blew up our base? Why is that racist? Should we have made them hot cocoa and read them a bedtime story? So we each treated each others prisoners badly on both sides. I don’t think it is personal when its war. I see no hatred of Japan or Japanese Americans today.

79

We did not routinely kill surrenduring Germans or Italians. We did not round up every ethnic German and Italian living in the Eastern U.S. in 1942 and ship them off to concentration camps. We treated different enemies differently based only on their ethnic backgrounds.

I am sorry that you think that it is OK to treat different ethnic groups in different ways for the same acts, but that really is the essence of racism–you feel that it is OK to use another person;'s ethnic background to change your actions.
As barbaric as Japanese behavior often was–and it was–we had signed the various Geneva and Hague conventions that held us to a higher standard of behavior and we simply abandoned our principles because we considered one group of (Asian) enemies inferior to a different group of (European) enemies. The Germans had been killing Americans by torpedoing ships for months before Pearl Harbor, yet we did not routinely treat them in the same manner.

That you see no hatred of Japanese today is a function of several different events. One thing is time. A 21 year old in December, 1941 will turn 90, this year. People who grew up on Godzilla and Toyotas and Sony do not necessarily share the values of their predecessors. In the 1950s, movies such as Teahouse of the August Moon and Sayonara presented a slightly younger audience with a more sympathetic portrayal of the Japanese, (still using ethnic Europeans in heavy makeup to portray the important Japanese people, of course). There are dozens of ethnic Japanese appearing on TV and in movies, nowadays, so that viewers tend to see them simply as “people” rather than as buck-toothed, squinty-eyed vermin as they were typically portrayed during WWII. Following the war, when a lot of troops were stationed in Japan, and later when the U.S. used Japan as its base area for the Korean War, some of the racism abated as Yanks got to know the Japanese people, personally.

Another aspect is that overt hatred is rarely acceptable in society, these days, so, unless you personally encounter a person expressing hatred, you may not be aware of it. When Japanese cars were first drubbing Detroit cars in the market, there was a lot more freely expressed hatred floating around, particularly among workers, then in their late fifties or early sixties, who still harbored their WWII feelings. In fact, two idiots in Detroit murdered an ethnic Chinese man, (since they could not tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese), for “taking their jobs” and the fool of a judge, (of roughly the same age), who heard the trial wound up giving them slaps on the wrist because he could “understand” how they felt.

The fact that most of that racism has finally been put behind us says nothing about the amount and level of racism that occurred in the country during WWII.

80

Butting in again… I don’t see anyone mentioning racism being used as just another weapon. The Japanese attacked us, and we mobilized soldiers. Guns. Planes. Ships. And… racism. As just one more weapon in the arsenal.

ITSM the mere fact that it could be effective against the Japanese is the biggest reason it was as prevalent as it was. Try to spread racist propaganda in the US against Germans or Italians in 1943 and a sizeable part of the population is going to get upset- hey, we’re Germans/Italians! The Japanese were far, far more ‘other’ at this point. Remember, the US had extended all the way to the Pacific for only about 100 years at this time (since victory in the Mexican-American War), whereas Europeans in the New World go all the way back to 1492. And with only so many exceptions, ethnic Japanese were confined to Japanese territory. Racist propaganda against Japanese people would in the majority of cases have the effect of stoking hatred against the enemy- since the enemy in the Pacific was all the same race, and people in this country for the most part had never come to know people with this background.

Demonizing the enemy in the Pacific served the war effort, and it was easy, too!