Were they the same acts, though? I don’t find it unlikely that an attack on sailors at sea would be seen differently to an attack on American soil, especially when the former were transporting weapons for use against the Germans while the Pearl Harbor fleet were, as I understand it, basically minding their own business.
Let me try this again... [Has technology surpassed our humanity & was the Pacific war about racism?]
I never said that they were the same, (although the USS Reuben James was a U.S. Navy ship, not some random freighter).
However, the idea that we were only more ferocious toward the Japanese because of Pearl Harbor and that racism played no role is not supported by the facts.
Certainly, the surprise attack on Hawaii, along with the Bataan Death March and other atrocities, spurred on a deep desire for vengeance that went beyond the attitude toward Germany that it was a foe that needed to be defeated. However, that desire for vengeance played out in racist expressions throughout the war, from the killing of surrendering prisoners already discussed, through Executive Order 9066 that was aimed at U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, to the propaganda that was routinely employed throughout the war. Some propaganda used humorous caricatures, of course, but when portraying the enemy as a foe, Germans tended to be portrayed as evil humans while Japanese tended to be portrayed as subhuman monsters, or even animals. (There are exceptions to the general trend in both directions, but the overall trend was there.)
Remember, this thread began with an abbreviated and unexplained excerpt of a comment by Tom Hanks that the war in the Pacific was a war of “racism and terror.” There is no claim that the war was launched to promote racism or that without racism the war would not have happened. I’m not sure why there is such a need to come up with odd excuses to pretend that racism played no part. As Hanks noted, the World War II Museum in New Orleans, (designated by Congress as the National WWII Museum, one that unabashedly celebrates the struggle and heroics of the U.S. people of that time), displays a quotation from Stephen Ambrose making the point that racism played a role in the prosecution of the war.
In what universe is the word Jap not as offensive as Nigger, Gook, or Chink?
Because it was in usage in newspapers during a conflict? Even I don’t think Curtis is this stupid or ill informed.
This is the worst misrepresentation that I have seen him make to date, and that is saying something.
Here’s the relevant quote:
Let me ask a different question: Was racism the primary reason the Pacific War was unusually vicious?
From what I understand, the Japanese were formidable in all theaters of their war. What if I wrote, Japanese brutality was racist. Sure it’s an aspect but aren’t there other factors? Is that really the Japanese identity and historical motivation? Racism?
Perhaps the brutality of the Pacific war was a reaction to a brutal enemy? Or the perception that the enemy was particularly brutal?
Some examples of Japanes brutality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
Apparently, the prohibition against “trophy taking” body parts came as early as 1942.
I’m not trying to pick on Tom Hanks, I’ve enjoyed many of his movies ( Joe vs. the Volcano - not so much.).
[QUOTE=Regullus]
Let me ask a different question: Was racism the primary reason the Pacific War was unusually vicious?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, though I think people are ignoring how vicious and brutal the war was on the Eastern Front between Russia and Germany. However, in the Pacific, I’d say that things were more vicious between the US and Japan (and, frankly, Japan and everyone else they were fighting) due mainly to racism. The American’s viewed the Japanese as both treacherous AND as sub-human, and the Japanese viewed themselves as both superior and everyone else as sub-human and not worthy of respect or decent treatment. Whenever you are able to convince yourself that the other side is sub-human, then atrocities are going to follow, and both sides were deeply convinced that the other side not worthy of respect or decent treatment.
Well, their primary motivation was to build an empire similar to those they saw the Europeans having (they always felt they missed out on the great land grab, and by the time they COULD start to think in such terms, the Euro’s changed the rules and wouldn’t let them play). They needed natural resources, and so their orientation was expansionist with the goal of capturing the resources they needed to become the world power they wanted and felt they deserved to be. It didn’t hurt that they felt themselves superior to everyone else, including the Chinese, Korean’s, various Pacific Island ‘races’, the Europeans, American’s, Aussies and…well, everyone else. When you think of others in such terms, it’s easy to convince yourself that what they have you should be able to take…this was the rationale that the Europeans and to a lesser (or some would say greater) extent America used to justify expansionism and exploitation.
As for the brutality aspect, even if both sides had been honorable, it was going to be a brutal campaign. The nature of the fighting, and the fact that the Japanese looked dis-favorably on surrender would have made it so, regardless. The racism I think just ramped up the brutality factor by several notches, and it made committing atrocities justifiable (to the soldiers and citizens of the nations involved).
Japan had shown their perchance for brutality long before the US entered the war. Look up the Rape of Nanking sometime. I don’t think that the Chinese were particularly brutal, at least not prior to the Japanese invasion. As to America’s actions, sure, the sneak attack and the nature of the campaign was going to make US soldiers more brutal, regardless of how the two sides treated each other. Also, the concept of Total War was going to make things brutal…we were brutal enough towards the German soldiers and German civilians, after all, just not to the degree we were towards Japanese soldiers. But the US government set out to deliberately and through the use of propaganda to incite the populace and our soldiers to consider the Japanese sub-human monsters for who no quarter could be given or received…and that ramped things up many more notches.
-XT
Allmost certainly. It is much easier to perform babrbaric acts if one perceives one’s opponent as less than human.
Why does “motivation” keep getting thrown in, here? Motivation for what?
Motivation for prosecuting a war of conquest? Probably not. That had much more to do with looking for ways to ensure a reliable supply of natural resources to support an industrial nation with a similar, if not quite as strong, desire for cheap labor.
Motivation for mistreatment of captured peoples? Probably. Japan has a very tight self identity. By avoiding conquest for several hundred years, they were able to create an image of themselves as better and “more pure” than other peoples who had all, at one time or another, been subjected to conquest with its attendant intermixing of ethnicities. The one significant minority population, the Ainu, were relegated to a small share of the Northernmost Islands and treated with utter disdain. Okinawans face a similar disparagement from people on the main islands as being “not really” Japanese. (In some ways, this is similar to the “Aryan” hoax perpetrated by the Nazis, but the Japanese had several hundred years to build up this self image rather than the 20 years available to the Nazis.) So when Japan conquered Koreans or Chinese or Filipinos–particularly when they did so with apparent ease–their homeland stereotypes were reinforced and they felt far too free to treat their subjected peoples as less than human.
In some ways it was. Even more than Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death march became a watchword in the U.S. for Japanese treachery and barbarism. However, it is a mistake to treat this as an “either/or” situation. There was already an anti-Asian and anti-Japanese bias in the U.S. long before WWII. Asian immigration was thwarted and Asian immigrants were subjected to mistreatment to a degree that Eastern Europeans never were, being denied citizenship, the right to own property, and other indignities.
When Japanese barbarity was displayed, it simply reinforced existing feelings of hatred and prejudice that then became the motivation to inflict harm or degradation on the Japanese. None of the Nissei or Issei Japanese confined to concentration camps had been involved with Nanking or Bataan, yet they were still deprived of their homes and livelihood and sent to live in deserts. The few accusations of betrayal lodged against them had more to do with protests launched within the camps than any actual threat against the U.S.
Whenever I think you can’t get any more absurd, you surprise me.
Obviously, each and every one of those terms was used by the “respectable press” at one time. That has nothing to do with whether or not any of them are acceptable in polite society today.