WAR WITHOUT MERCY: Race and Power in the Pacific War

by John Dower ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 1986

A history of the war of words that turned the Pacific theater in WW II into a racial contest, pitting the ""evil American beasts"" against the ""yellow Jap monkeys."" Dower (Japanese History/UC, San Diego), author of Empire and Aftermath, tells a sad story of mutual racial antagonism that led headlong into a brutal war of extermination. Americans went into battles with the goal of eliminating every last vestige of the Japanese, a goal somewhat more final than the attitude of our soldiers towards, say, their Caucasian brethen, the Germans. We learn, in fact, that the famous cinema director Frank Capra was enlisted by Washington to produce a piece of propaganda, Know Your Enemy--Japan, which showed Japan as an octopus with its tentacles grasping at all of Asia and reaching out across the Pacific. This is nothing new. Allan Nevins has previously written that ""probably in all our history no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese."" What/s new is the thoroughness with which Dower documents the racial aspects of this war. (Lest one think that the racism was entirely the province of the G.I., Dower is quick to show that the Japanese themselves were guilty of the grossest form of ""super-race"" propaganda, which led them to war as brutally upon other Asiatics as upon the Ameri. cans, British and other whites in their path. The end of the war did not end all racial stigmas, however, despite America's apparent about, face as a friendly nation. Douglas MacArthur is quoted in unguarded moments as planning on treating the Japanese as ""twelve-year-olds"" to train them into democracy. And there were many who predicted that the Japanese would extend their ""Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"" to the world as they adapted to the technological age--a forecast that seems ever more on the money. Eye-opening, if at times a bit academically heavy-handed.

Pub Date: May 19, 1986

ISBN: 0394751728

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION