Back from Beppu and continuing my reports on the book War Without Mercy that I introduced here before my travels commenced. I’ve finished the section on allied and Japanese war atrocities, which were numerous and terrible on both sides, and which I briefly mentioned in my previous post, and now I’ve also read the section on allied representations of the enemy. This section makes clear that the allied response to Japanese aggression was both furious and exterminationist in its content. That is, the allied war planners and propagandists, and allied media, made clear both their deep hatred of the Japanese, its racial origins, and their belief that the only solution to the problem of Japanese aggression was extermination of the Japanese as a race. Obviously since the Japanese survived this goal was not enacted and cooler heads prevailed, but the propaganda that was driving the allied war effort in 1943-45 was genuinely disturbing stuff.
However, the nature of allied propaganda began to create uncomfortable contradictions in both internal political struggles in their own countries, and between them and some of their less “enlightened” allies. This is because it called on fundamentally old-fashioned racist tropes, but its connection to exterminationism and the defence of the colonial project led them into tricky political terrain.
The Eternal Racist
In an illuminating section of the book, professor Power points out that the allied anti-Japanese propaganda used in WW2 drew on a wealth of existing racist caricatures with almost no change or originality, simply substituting Japanese for Native Americans or black Americans. In fact, Roosevelt’s own father had been saying almost exactly similar exterminationist things about Native Americans, and the common images used to describe Japanese were borrowed directly from the racist lexicon: they were animals, apes, children, insane, cunning, treacherous and had special “occult” powers. The accusation of “occult” powers was particular to anti-Asian racism and had previously been used against the Chinese; but all the other epiphets and images could have been used for any previous racial enemy of the US or Britain – and Power observes almost exactly equivalent language being used against Native Americans, black Americans, Mexicans, Chinese migrants and the Chinese nation, and then finally the Phillipines, over the course of just 150 years. He also points out that the original Spanish descriptions of the Native Americans of South America were interchangeable with the allies’ claims about the Japanese; and to this he could undoubtedly have added the British defense of their colonial practices in India, and western descriptions of Aborigines and Maoris[1].
The Colonial Project Continues
The other aspect of allied propaganda that was quite surprising was its open acknowledgement and approval of the colonial project in the Pacific and Asia. The US even had a popular song, To Be Specific, It’s Our Pacific that summarized western ideas about the war. Political and opinion leaders didn’t shy from defending their right to own territories or colonies in Asia, and their anger at Japanese temerity in attempting to either establish its own colonies, or to take theirs. The war now is seen as a war to preserve freedom, but the western peoples of the 1940s were comfortable seeing it as a war to preserve their overseas colonies. One report to war planners even observed that many Asians in the fighting territories saw the war “cynically” as a war between fascists and imperialists. How very cynical of them! Churchill openly stated his aim as the preservation and continuation of Britain’s colonial possessions, and many war leaders saw the Pacific war specifically as a race war, between “white supremacy” and the “coloured races.” They worried that the “coloureds” were stirring, and explicitly saw the Japanese attack as a threat to the long-standing world order. Having portrayed the Japanese as apes and animals, they now had to face the fact that these “apes” were capable of besting the “superior” races in military activity, and were setting an example that other Asians might choose to follow. Some of the more alarmist planners saw in this the germ of the long term collapse of the white race, and openly stated so.
These worries were acutely seen in two areas: fear of the effect of the war on black Americans, and fear of the collapse of China.
Racism at Home
It’s well-established (though not often discussed) that the US was extremely racist in its dealings with black soldiers. Black Americans were not allowed in combat roles until very late in the war, were not allowed many promotions or the best or most skilled jobs in the army, and were even required to maintain a separate blood plasma supply: that’s right, black blood couldn’t be used in white soldiers, even though the people writing this policy knew that the scientific evidence was that the blood types were indistinguishable. Some racists portrayed plans to amalgamate the blood supplies as an attempt to weaken the white race by merging its blood with black blood. Black American blood. In Australia, the US government sought (and was granted, I think) special permission to maintain its segregation laws in the housing of US soldiers in Australia, and conflict regularly occurred between US and Australian soldiers in public places when Australian men and women failed to observe American ideals about segregation – particularly, Australian women would date black soldiers and the soldiers would be punished by their white colleagues for miscegenation[2]! Black Americans were acutely aware of their unequal status as combatants for “freedom,” as exemplified in these two slogans from black freedom activists:
Defeat Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito by Enforcing the Constitution and Abolishing Jim Crow
and
I want you to know I ain’t afraid. I don’t mind fighting. I’ll fight Hitler, Mussolini and the Japs all at the same time, but I’m telling you I’ll give those crackers down South the same damn medicine[3]
One black soldier upon enlistment gave as his suggested headstone “Here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of the white man.” This distinction between racism at home and race-hate abroad created a problem for the white authorities, a problem they were aware of and, sadly, not particularly interested in addressing: how can you call for the extermination of a race of apes overseas, using exactly the same language you use to describe a group of people you are oppressing domestically, and expect loyalty from those same people? And how can you maintain your theories of superiority over that domestic group, when the people you paint in the same language overseas are kicking your arse in an area the size of the Pacific?
Loyalty from black Americans was a source of worry for American war planners, who broke up a few groups that may have been getting support or information from the Japanese, and the Japanese certainly attempted to use the Jim Crow laws as propaganda against America (in Japan). However, black American loyalty was largely to America, and the bigger worry for US policy makers was that the Japanese might provide black Americans with inspiration in their own struggle. With Japanese defeat looming, a large number of Americans would be returning from the front armed with the certain knowledge that “inferior” races could defeat “superior” races, and that the racial policy of the past 50 years was hollow; but at the same time they were exhorting white men to exterminate Japanese men with the same underlying logic of white supremacy that was being used to hold black people down in the US. Would this not make US blacks extremely uncomfortable? By using this language, the government had basically shown itself to be of a piece, ideologically, with the supremacists who still murdered black men in the South.
The US response to this appears to have been weak, with no real effort made to amend domestic laws or to move towards the end of segregation and Jim Crow. The only efforts they made were security efforts, to arrest domestic activists and look harder for evidence of connections between Japanese and militant black movements. They showed a little more foresight in dealing with the problem of the “coloured races” rising up abroad, but even there they were complacent and had great difficulty shaking off basic racism, as is shown in the case of the allies’ dealings with China.
The Collapse of China and World War Three
The allied war planners’ biggest fear was that China would collapse or surrender, freeing up 2 million Japanese soldiers to advance into Asia and lending all of China’s economic, industrial and manpower resources to the Japanese. Almost as devastating would be a peace treaty between China and Japan, and the most likely cause of such a treaty – besides China’s exhaustion after 7 years of war – would be their treatment by their allies. Churchill had made it clear he intended to maintain British colonies in the Far East, and the allies refused to rescind a special treaty which prevented China from trying foreigners in local courts. But worst of all was US racism toward Chinese migrants in the US, who were placed in a special category of undesirables and refused both admission and naturalization rights. The catalogue of racist laws applying to the Chinese in the 1940s is quite horrifying, and saddening, and shows an intense and abiding anti-Oriental racism in the west at that time. It was impossible for Chinese to become US citizens at the start of the war, and almost impossible for them to enter the country at all, or only at a very high price and often with extreme difficulty. These laws were a big issue to Chinese in China, and it was obvious that the threefold combination of British imperialism, US racism, and allied special privileges in Asia could turn Chinese attitudes against their western allies. But it was extremely difficult for the US to give up its anti-Chinese laws, and in 1944 as a comprise it allowed a quota of just 105 Chinese a year to become citizens, provided they were new migrants. This was the WW2-era Americans’ idea of a compromise to a lower race. Even though they were fighting a huge and terrifying war in the Pacific, whose outcome at least partly depended upon their treatment of their local allies, they couldn’t properly give up their racist ideals. Similarly Britain, which was highly dependent on its colonial armies as a bulwark against Japan and knew that at least some of the countries it relied on were shaky, refused to give up its colonialist policies in Asia. By this time India was beginning to rebel against white rule, the Burmese had at one point showed allegiance to Japan, and the Japanese were using the language of the East Asia co-prosperity Sphere to claim that they were liberating Asia from white imperialism. Had they behaved less like colonialists themselves this propaganda might even have been successful.
This toxic mix of rebellion by the “inferior” Japanese, activism in colonial provinces, black activism at home, and fears of Chinese collapse, led many commentators in the West to fear that the world was on the brink of a new war that might explode from the ashes of WW2 – a war between the races, with the Eastern “coloureds” rising up against the “superior” whites. The fear of Americans was that the Chinese would fall behind this rebellion and the west would be both outnumbered and outgunned. They spoke of Japan “winning the war by losing” and of the “rising wind” becoming a hurricane.
The Pacific War as a Missed Opportunity
Very few western commentators and politicians saw either the logic or the principle of the obvious measures required to prevent this hurricane – rescinding racist laws, voluntarily withdrawing from their colonies, and ushering in a newer, fairer world order – even though many of Japan’s reasons for entering the war were connected to its racist and unequal treatment between 1905 and 1937. So it was that the war came to its end with the West still convinced of its superiority – perhaps even reassured, after putting Japan “in her place” – and unwilling to consider the wholesale changes that would be required to restore peace to half the world. So it was that over the next 20 years we saw colonial territories throw out their masters, often violently and with huge death tolls in India, Indonesia and Malaysia, the establishment of new and fucked up Juntas in Burma and Africa, and the collapse of economies through war and the scorched earth policy of the colonial masters. Following this was the civil rights movement in America and the sad and terrible disgrace that is the US invasion of Vietnam. Instead of seeing Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour as a wake up call and the ensuing war as the final battle over racist ideology, that they must inevitably lose, the colonial powers mistook it as a chance to reassert their grip, and in tightening the screws they just increased the pain that those countries were willing to bear in order to gain their freedom. As the universe’s most famous freedom fighter once said – the more you tighten your grip, the more they slip through your fingers. This means that the Pacific War was not just a catastrophic and avoidable mistake at the time it happened, but the one useful lesson that could have been gained from it was missed, and a teaching moment for Western Imperialism was overlooked. The ensuing history of Asia was written largely in blood, much of it probably avoidable if the allies had not cleaved so strongly to the racist ideals that underlay their ideology in both war and peace at that time.
(Note: Illustrations are from the text).
—
fn1: As an interesting aside, our approach seems to have become much, much more mature in recent years – descriptions of Afghani and Iraqi enemies are generally much less dehumanizing than those used in World War 2, even though al Qaeda’s treachery on September 11th was comparable with – or worse than – Pearl Harbour.
fn2: I’m taking this information from an ABC documentary on segregation in Australia, not from Power’s book.
fn3: Note here a subtle effect of the racist tone of war propaganda. The western European enemies (Italy and Germany) are identified with their leaders; the Pacific enemy are identified as a race
July 17, 2011 at 5:23 pm
SG – I’ve come to this post via L.P. What a wealth of commentary on this subject and the book. Congratulations.
I was a child during the war the book refers to and consiouslessly took on board many of the portrayals depicted in the book. My awakening began in my twenties when I began to ponder on what I regarded as the horror of the atom bombs and the destruction of so many lives. Since then of course I have met many Japanese people who are just like me in their ambitions in life, their love of family. While I do not share so much the reverence of old traditions, I can respect the fact that they are held.
Not only Japanese people, but many Asians also were the subject of people’s fears and ignorance. In my adult life I have travelled in Asia and met so many people – again just like me in their aspirations, but many living vastly different economic lives.
Unfortunately I’ve never been to Japan but would have loved to have done so.
I have a relative who has lived and studied in Japan for many years and is working in Tokoyo. At the time of the earthquake and tsunami there was never any question that she would not stay in Japan even though her parents pleaded with her to return to Australia. She loves the people and the life and the language.
I’ll get the book and read it knowing that it will be hard to read, but it is good that some new light is being thrown on some of the most rigidly held stereotypes of the Western world.
July 17, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Thank you mediatracker.
I came across this book while reading Browning’s Ordinary Men, which is about the holocaust and mentions Power’s thesis in passing. My main interest in getting the book was to find out about this undisclosed element of allied military history – when I grew up in the UK and Oz, the war was very much presented to me as a battle between good and bad, the only exterminationists were the nazis and no one on our side did anything bad – or if they did it was the odd “rotten apple,” not an institutional thing. I’d seen some negative war reports but their worst element was the use of the word “jap” and an unseemly gloating over wartime deaths. So I was interested to find out the truth about our past misdeeds, and it is much worse than I had suspected. But Power goes beyond merely pointing out things that aren’t well known to include a detailed discussion of how and why racism is used in wartime propaganda, what its consequences might be and what the political culture was at the time.
It’s hard to believe from our current perspective just how different the world was a mere 60 years ago, and looking at even the moderate right-wing propaganda about modern wars, the difference in representation and purpose is huge. Only the very nastiest of modern media figures would suggest exterminationist rhetoric in our war against
islamterror, and as far as I know no serious political figure anywhere in the coalition of the willing has used such language. And the dehumanizing language just isn’t there – even when we imprison them without trial, I would say that the majority of commentators on our current situation still see our enemy as basically human, and the conflict is couched in terms of cultural differences rather than racial differences. Looking back just 60 years is like peering into a different world (and a much less pleasant one!)July 17, 2011 at 7:15 pm
What a load of unmitigated twaddle. Apart from the fact the left over and second generation militarists both in Japan and Germany who started the carnage of WW2, are still alive and kicking, you will never sell this swill to my generation.
I am by my fathers side 1. Part Jewish. 2. My father was wounded WW2.(which he never got over) 3. My fathers brother was in Changi for two years. (which he never got over)All of which I can prove.
It will take another hundred years for the above mentioned races to have their souls cleansed of this stain on humanity.
This revionnist history really does get on my tits. It has the same hollow ring as holocaust denial, and, that the Germans didn’t know it was going on.
And No! I am not a racist.
Bollocks!
July 17, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Wow! Now that’s what I call engagement… and so much wrong with it. Shall we go through line by line?
If we suppose for a moment that the left over militarists started the carnage of WW2 when they were 20, in 1942, which is both ludicrous and ahistorical, then they must now be 89 years old. How many of these 20 year old uber-fascists from Japan do you think are still around? And what part of this is “swill”? Do you deny that the two pictures linked to are exterminationist in tone? Do you deny that America had Jim Crow laws while it was fighting for “freedom”? Perhaps you deny that Australia committed atrocities in world war 2? If your father’s brother’s presence in Changi justifies some kind of inter-generational wrath, then surely someone in Japan whose father’s brother was thrown out of a plane after capture can be angry at you?
So war-guilt is an inter-generational stain? I should front up to my Japanese friend tomorrow, say e.g. Miss Wisteria, who is 23 years old, and tell her she bears the stain of her grandfather’s generation? Why, exactly, should she bear that stain? And if she does bear such a stain, doesn’t that mean that you bear the stain of all the wrongs done by our country in its history? So Aboriginal Australians get to say that your soul cannot be cleansed of the acts of your grandfather’s generation, and because my parents are British my soul is irrevocably stained by the involvement of people I never knew in India or Northern Ireland?
What’s revisionist about this history? Do you deny any of it is true? You seem to have a very definite lack of countervailing evidence. You haven’t engaged with the argument at all. You don’t, in fact, appear interested in addressing anything about the history of the war at all. And no, it’s not the same as holocaust denial. No one here is denying Japanese atrocities or Japanese racism – the book is full of descriptions of both, in fact there are 4 chapters devoted to Japanese racism. FYI, this book quotes newspaper articles from the UK in 1944 glorying in reports of the wanton slaughter of survivors of ships as they floated in the water. An American submarine captain was given a medal for slaughtering unarmed sailors as they floated in the water after he sank their ship. This history wasn’t secret at the time, and it is the disappearance of that history from modern record that constitutes revisionism, not a book that brings it back into the light. So please, please point out the revisionism if you can find it.
July 17, 2011 at 8:22 pm
“What’s revisionist about this history? Do you deny any of it is true? ”
You are missing the point. I could care less what the Australians, Americans, British or any of the other allies did in retaliation to the Axis powers in WW2. They started the bloody war not us.
Your contention that there are no militarists still alive and well in both countries concerned is just not risible, it is historically incorrect. The left overs of the Nazi bully boys are not only alive and well in Germany, they’re in England, and many parts of Europe. More commonly known in England as, the British nationalist party.
There have been many documentaries made about the militarist culture that is alive and well in Germany and Japan. And no nothing, is going to change that salient fact.
Any atrocities carried out by the allies during WW2 would not have been sanctioned by the commanding military authority or indeed the government. Many soldiers on the allied side were hung during the war for committing crimes against not only enemy military personal but civilians.The behaviour you stated went on, I am not bloody stupid. However to claim this was sanctioned unlike it was from the axis powers is complete and utter rubbish.
To claim I am not responsible for what my antecedents did to the Aboriginals is a cop out. We only say that because of the guilt we all share for trying to commit genocide on them. Oh it wasn’t me so lets just get on with it. Bollocks to that.
Reviosnism of WW2 has been going on, and is becoming an art form especially among the rabid right, who are now trying to convince the world Nazi’s were communists it is all part of the same disease it’s called Bollocks!
July 17, 2011 at 11:15 pm
I see, you’re approaching analysis of the war from a left-wing perspective, that it was a just war against fascism. Many people at the time didn’t see the Pacific War that way, in fact during the early period of Japanese advance at least one Burmese political leader saw it as a chance to throw off colonial chains, and as I pointed out in the post, some American military planners were concerned that Asian peoples saw it as a war between imperialists and fascists – not a just war from their perspective. The Japanese had the help of at least one Indian militarist who saw the war as a chance to throw off colonial chains. But the Japanese involvement in the war wasn’t an isolated act of fascism, incomprehensible except as an inevitable consequence of race hate. For them it was a distinctly colonial enterprise, and if their colonialist aims in China hadn’t been stymied by the allies in the 20s and early 30s they might not have entertained the idea of war against the allies. You will no doubt reply that that’s too bad for them, but as I pointed out in the post the US was explicitly viewing the war in terms of colonial policy (“to be specific, it’s our pacific”). Any attempt to deny Japanese the same “rights” is surely based in racism, and any war goals aimed at preserving colonial possessions (explicitly stated by no less a personage than Churchill himself) are clearly not war goals aimed at defeating fascism or preserving freedom.
Typically leftists portray WW1 as a war over imperial spoils, and WW2 as a war against fascism. The latter may be true of the war in Europe, but in the Pacific? The war in the Pacific was a result of 30 years of failure to engage a growing regional power, and is explicitly cited by modern political leaders as a salutary lesson in how not to deal with China.
In defense of your view of the inherent righteousness of WW2, you claim that
Perhaps you don’t realise that the second image in this post (“louseous Japanicus”) is from the official magazine for the Marines, Leatherneck. That’s explicit government endorsement of extermination. Here is another quote from Power’s book:
Perhaps a major isn’t high enough in the chain of command for you, and an official battle report not a sufficiently weighty document? Perhaps you prefer an objective account, from a different military historian who was present in Bougainville?
Perhaps a Major General doesn’t count as a high enough authority? Perhaps you think he was hanged for his crimes, unlike the submarine captain who was given a medal? Shall we look instead at political leaders? Churchill advocated
and Roosevelt’s son suggested killing half the civilian population of Japan. Chairman of the War Manpower Commission Paul McNutt “favored the extermination of the Japanese people in toto.” That would be 70 million people, living under a military dictatorship. 35 million of those people at least – all the women – had never received the right to vote for their leaders, who had in any case been deposed by a military coup d’etat in the early 30s. Do you think they deserved to be exterminated in toto? All the old women, too?
Do you still claim in light of this evidence that atrocities were not sanctioned by higher authorities? The evidence is that they were, and the implication from my perspective is that we have been lied to in our history lessons and by our “documentaries,” into believing that allied behaviour was exemplary when it was actually very far from good. These lies are pretty simple to tell – just don’t mention them, and hide the worst of the war propaganda from the history books. It’s not as if this is hard – how many British people know about the terror bombing of Iraq in the 20s? Do you think many French know about the massacre of 8000 Thais in the late 1930s? Did you know about this, and do you think it is somehow morally superior to Pearl Harbour? That was then and this is now, and our modern sensibilities about “fascism” and human rights don’t look well on our political forefathers. The Pacific war was a huge and avoidable catastrophe, and to say so is not revisionism.
I’d be interested to hear about the “militarist culture” of Japan, a country that has a constitutional bar on foreign wars and a population heavily invested in peace. Perhaps you are referring to the lunatic fringe far right? Or perhaps you just don’t understand Japanese politics. Militarism is mainstream politics in Britain and the US, but fringe madness in Japan. But it’s also de rigueur for westerners to accuse modern Japan of continuing the racism and militarism of the war, as if nothing here ever changed. You should update your stereotypes.
Finally, about genocide in Australia. We can say “it wasn’t me” without adding “so let’s get on with it.” Things don’t have to be so simple.
July 18, 2011 at 9:17 am
Hmm, couple of thoughts:
1. It’s interesting that propaganda was used so heavily in all theatres of the war. I’d be interested to see if there is any link between such propaganda and the ability of a modern democracy to fight a war without succumbing to war weariness. For example, if you look at Vietnam and the war on terror, the interest in fighting the war is minimal and the costs regarded as too high. In the face of united official propaganda, would that be otherwise?
2. “…as I pointed out in the post the US was explicitly viewing the war in terms of colonial policy (“to be specific, it’s our pacific”). Any attempt to deny Japanese the same “rights” is surely based in racism”
Nonsense. It could just as easily be realpolitik. If they then dressed it up in racist tropes afterward it’s no less reprehensible, but it’s a different problem to if they hated a race and just wanted to keep them down.
In practice, separating these two intertwined drivers is impossible and was probably impossible at even the time. But it’s still important to allow that nations can feel ownership over chunks of land seas away without being racist. Because that’s also a useful lesson and one that bears remembering during China’s rise.
3. Does the book have any record of Japanese propaganda? While their behaviour is well documented and frequently retold, I’m unaware of cartoons like the ones you have above, but from the Japanese side. I’m curious if they needed the same degree of propaganda in order to whip up dislike of foreigners, or whether that was instilled enough into the culture at the time (i.e. gaijin) (as per Western racism)
4. To lynot: As Faustus says, it’s perfectly possible to reject the concept of intergenerational guilt but accept a need to help Aboriginal Australians based purely on the current need. And indeed, that’s the theory I subscribe to.
Intergenerational guilt is a nonsense concept that gives rise to crap like “blood libel” against the Jews, original sin as a justification for evil and “It will take another hundred years for the above mentioned races to have their souls cleansed of this stain on humanity.”. Screw all of those ideas.
5. To Fautus: Based on our previous discussions, I know you accept intergenerational benefit (if not directly descent) as being a valid means of tracing who owes whom. Notably in the form of saying Australian’s should assist Aboriginal Australian’s based on the advantage most of the society has, as a result of Aboriginal dispossession, and that they lack. But that’s awfully like intergenerational guilt. Are you looking for equivalence between both sides of WWII in order to prove to yourself that there is no debt from the war so you can continue to support such concepts in other arenas such as Australia and the Middle East (i.e. terror bombing of Iraq in the 20s)?
Please note, I’m not expecting an answer of other than “No”, but at least turn the idea over in your mind.
July 18, 2011 at 9:54 am
Good points all …
1. I agree that some kind of propaganda is probably necessary to mobilize for significant war effort, but the book points out the notable difference between war propaganda aimed at Japanese vs. Germans (for example). Early on the book notes that allied propagandists explicitly excluded the concept of a “good” Japanese, whereas they always allowed for this with the Germans, carefully distinguishing between the German people and the Nazis (this effort may have faded in later years of the war but generally was maintained throughout). Also, many of the atrocities towards the Japanese never happened against Germans (especially, e.g. digging out gold teeth). So this suggests it’s possible to have a total war footing without scraping the bottom of the propaganda barrel. The Germans did the same against the US, of course, deriding them as a misguided victim of International Jewry rather than portraying them as an inferior race.
2. Good point! But Japanese colonial ambitions were not treated in the same way as inter-allied colonial ambitions. The allies would divide up the region according to historical experience or demands, but they didn’t see Japan as having a legitimate interest in, e.g. Korea, which no-one in the west had a historical claim on. So there seems to be a fair bit of racism in meddling with the Japanese colonial goals, as it extended to areas where the west wasn’t particularly active or interested.
3. I’ve started on the book’s record of Japanese propaganda now and it is noticeably different. Professor Power characterizes it as elevating the Japanese race rather than denigrating other races. There’s a telling image of a girl scrubbing out dandruff, and the dandruff is western ideas. But there’s a lot less ugly racist caricature, and Japanese racism is of necessity much more conflicted (since their war machine is based on western technology). I’ll attempt to summarize that part of the book once I’ve read it.
5. I don’t think I’m doing that and I don’t think that allied atrocities wipe out, e.g. Japanese debt to neighbouring countries it terrorized. That would be a false equivalence. Given that Japan started the war, any equivalence is ultimately false. My interest is more in reviewing my understanding of the allies’ conduct and the common (generally leftist, I think) characterization of WW2 as not being a war over colonial spoils. Orwell’s legacy of anti-fascism, etc. As you know I’ve got a long-standing interest in the post-colonial reinterpretation of literature and history, and WW2 is a valid area of inquiry in that regard.
I agree that my view of inter-generational debt can be seen as very close to inter-generational guilt, but I don’t think they’re the same. E.g. Japan has a responsibility to remember the events of the past (in a cultural legacy sense) in order to avoid repeating them (and to serve as a lesson to us!) But if they paid adequate war reparations they have no further inter-generational debt, and it should (ideally) be possible for them to maintain the cultural legacy without feeling guilt. Maybe for some westerners guilt is an important means of maintaining that legacy of memory; for me it’s not (I’m not christian and I generally consider guilt to be a useless emotion). Maybe that clarifies things?
July 18, 2011 at 11:14 am
1. I wasn’t suggesting any propaganda was good or desirable, merely that its use in some form (racist, anti-leader or other) may be necessary to instil a willingness to keep fighting into a democracy. Everyone can make their own call on the circumstances it should be used.
For me, I’d prefer to have the democracy accept the necessity (when it is necessary) without requiring the propaganda as I object to the manipulation of your own populace in that manner. But I suspect my ideological purity would fare badly in the real world.
5 ”But if they paid adequate war reparations they have no further inter-generational debt, and it should (ideally) be possible for them to maintain the cultural legacy without feeling guilt.”
I still think this is the core of our differences on this topic. Your attempt to allow for the possibility of repayment followed by a state of freedom from obligation runs totally counter to most of your other opinions.
If my brother and I grow up in the same household and have the same upbringing and opportunities then there is clearly no debt between us. Neither has been privileged over the other. But if I earn $200k a year and my brother is only able to get a $20k job, then you support taxing me to give money to my brother.
Based on that I can safely assume that if Japan were to total up its debt to the nations it invaded and make a lump sum payment which was squandered, then you wouldn’t assume Japan was free from obligation – you’d believe it should help its neighbours as it’s more fortunate.
This is most relevant when considering indigenous communities that have been dispossessed. It would be possible to calculate a value of the undeveloped land of Australia, allow for inflation and reasonable rates of return, subtract allowances for state payments to everyone of Aboriginal heritage and then arrive at a total owed [1]. But given the disadvantage present in Aboriginal communities we can safely assume that in at least some cases that money would be squandered or lead to even worse outcomes (such as drug or alcohol related deaths).
Because of that, the concept of an intergenerational debt is a useless concept. You can’t meaningfully repay it, because doing so isn’t a good act, but an evil one. Therefore disregarding it and simply lumping the need to assist others under the pre-existing concepts that I know you subscribe to is a much more elegant and helpful mental construct.
[1] For the purposes here I’m overlooking recompense for the people killed. But the idea of a debt applying suggests it can be priced. [2]
[2] If it can’t be priced, then it can’t be repaid. And if it can’t be repaid then there’s no point trying, you may as well just continue to accumulate debt. [3]
[3] Insert your heavily indebted country of choice joke here.
July 18, 2011 at 2:20 pm
“Finally, about genocide in Australia. We can say “it wasn’t me” without adding “so let’s get on with it.” Things don’t have to be so simple.”
There is nothing simple about genocide. Things aren’t simple and that is my point.
You are giving me a history lesson which I am aware of and is condescending and does nothing for your own argument. Bringing colonialism into the debate of WW1/2 is irrelevant to my opinion. The mostly working class that fought both these wars, were in the service of left over medi evil bully boys. They had no concept of all the points you are making.
What they were aware of was the “Rule Britannia culture” That permeated English/Australian schools for a hundred years in my case, in the fifties and sixties. I know, I am a child of this horse shit.They went off to both wars oblivious to the fact they were being used as cannon fodder. Britain was not going to lose its empire to a load of Japanese heathens or ignorant Nazi’s who were manipulated by theatre.like the Nuremberg rallies. (Think Abbott and carbon tax) The spoils of the British empire were for the upper classes, not working class smurfs who knew their place.
Your point about Churchill is true, I have read his biography. He was a drunk with a Union Jack sewn into the crutch of his undies, I don’t even think his speeches were that good.But moveing on.
Having said all that. You can put what ever you think are facts into this debate, you will not convince me that atrocities on our side were sanctioned by the military or government. If the allies took revenge for atrocities committed against them, so what? The Germans and Japanese with the authority of their governments killed millions. Was Dresden pay back? Was Hiroshima Nagasaki pay back? Again I could care less. My dads brother hated the Japs, he was also sorry they didn’t save an atomic bomb for Germany. This is the generation you are trying to convince with your hindsight and revision.We should all just get along.great sentiment and I agree If he my uncle was still alive he would print the above article out and wipe his arse on it.
Peace.
July 18, 2011 at 10:26 pm
lynot, it was you who made the simple suggestions. I was proposing quite the opposite.
I’m not sure how you can claim “bringing colonialism into the debate of ww1/2 is irrelevant” to your opinon, and follow this with a three or four paragraph rant about how working class soldiers didn’t understand colonialism and were oblivious to their role as cannon fodder. The Russian working class certainly understood this – they had a revolution in the midst of world war 1, as did the Germans. Do you think Australian and British soldiers were ignorant of this possibility, even though they voted overwhelmingly labour in 1945 (in the UK) and went to war for a shorter working week in 1948 (in Australia)? You do know what “pig iron Bob” refers to, don’t you, and why Gerard Henderson constantly complains that the unions “supported fascism” at the start of world war 2? I even presented you in this very post with a quote from a black man who clearly understood the colonialist implications of the war, and evidence that the leadership of the US and the UK were very worried about the consequences of the war for race relations and the colonial project. Maybe you’re just not reading anything I wrote, or arguing against an imaginary war critic in your head? In any case, the argument you’re responding to is not about what soldiers at the time thought of the war, but how the war has been presented to subsequent generations.
I don’t “think” that what I’m presenting are facts, I know they are. I have shown you evidence that the allied leadership sanctioned atrocities. You say “the germans and japanese with the authority of their governments killed millions.” What do you think the area bombing engaged in by the allies was? It was “the British and Americans with the authority of their governments killed millions.” The important issue lies in establishing the distinction between Japanese and allied atrocities. The Japanese also practiced area bombing of Chinese cities. Why is it that their acts are despicable and ours are righteous? Is there not some middle ground here, where we can criticize allied activities on the basis that their planning and justification was mired in racism? Perhaps it wasn’t, but arguing that it was impossible and any facts to the contrary must be wrong is not the way to go about this. There is an honourable post-war debate about the justification for area bombing and nuclear attacks, and it’s completely reasonable to bring information about the allied leaders racial ideology into this debate, just as it’s reasonable to bring Japanese racial ideology into a debate about their motives for start WW2. In fact, if we didn’t assess Japanese arguments for war in terms of their racism, we would probably be forced to conclude that they were morally in the right. It’s only through a post-colonialist analysis of their behaviour that we have any ability to assign a greater notion of “right” and “wrong” to the war.
Finally
I never realized he had so much in common with Sid Vicious!
July 18, 2011 at 10:52 pm
In response to Paul…
1. I think you’re right, and was just trying to suggest that this propaganda can be constructed without drawing on the worst racial stereotypes of the nazi era. And your ideological purity would fare well in the real world – remember Australia never had conscription for WW1 or WW2, but had the same rate of sign-ups as America and the UK.
5. I think you’re confusing three separate issues here: a) the practical implications of welfarism vs. its ideological basis, b) retributive taxation/justice and c) distributive taxation/justice. I’ll label them accordingly…
a) I agree it’s possible that money assigned as reparations might be squandered in some communities (ATSIC is an example of this phenomenon in many ways, though I believe it was avoidable). But this doesn’t make the concept of reparation bad. Obviously if the welfare method you would like to use would be counter-productive you just… don’t use it. Sadly in Aboriginal Health (for example) there are many examples of counter-productive (or more commonly, just plain useless) interventions but a lot of these are due to a lack of understanding of development issues and welfare politics, not something fundamental to the retributive justice concept (you see the same problem in overseas aid). Most of the debate about welfare in Australia and the UK is framed in this way – welfare as a notion isn’t challenged, but a lot of effort is put into avoiding poverty traps, welfare dependency, etc. This is, in my opinion, separate to teh concept of retributive/redistributive justice (unless, obviously, you could prove incontrovertibly that both concepts are always and everywhere counter-productive).
b) The calculation you suggest for the value of confiscated land, whether or not it can be done, is an example of retributive justice. This is conducted for different reasons to distributive justice, and they shouldn’t be confused. Even libertarian societies with no welfare system and no taxation will have a basic notion of retributive justice, in that (for example) if the (extremely limited) state needs land for an ICBM launchsite, it will need to confiscate it from someone, and will thus need to compensate them. Since ICBMs are (obviously) in everyone’s best interests, everyone needs to pay, so a small tax is raised. This is retributive justice. Applying it across generations is just a way of saying that a previous generation weren’t given justice, and their descendants suffered some economic disadvantage as a result while some other group gained an economic benefit, so some retribution should be made. Generally this takes on a redistributive form because the group of people who benefited is quite large and didn’t all benefit equally, and the pool of people who didn’t benefit is small and may have suffered very harshly. But that’s just a matter of calcluating who should pay and who should receive; it’s not a direct matter of redistributive justice, per se (I think).
c) You and your feckless brother[1] are an example of redistributive justice. In this case you don’t owe your brother anything, but we tax you for social services to support your brother for a variety of reasons that can range from highly marxist to highly conservative. Take your pick. There’s even a minimalist form of this redistributive model where we don’t give anything directly to your brother, but tax you to ensure that his children don’t suffer as a consequence of his fecklessness – to ensure they get healthcare and access to education, for example. A conservative vision for this redistribution recognizes that maintaining a mobile workforce with adequate skills, and a basic level of social stability, requires that the rich pay for the children of the feckless poor[2]. This has nothing to do with retributive justice (i.e. it’s not because we resent your wealth and think it’s an injustice you should make up for).
The same applies in international politics. We don’t want Japan to pay war reparations because they’re rich; we want them to pay because they destroyed stuff, and you should pay for shit you break. The overseas aid budget, on the other hand, is a kind of distributive justice. Obviously the two things get mingled together – most people expect Japan to have a high aid budget because they have long-standing social responsibilities in the region, and because wealthy nations benefit from the labour of their poorer neighbours the most. But I personally think they should be separated clearly in peoples’ minds, because otherwise the calls for Japan to have a big aid budget are essentially just coming from resentment, rather than clear policy motivations.
Your final paragraph is a more complicated issue. I am sympathetic to the suggestion that the existing welfare system is the best way to handle Aboriginal disadvantage, but I think it’s wrong for a simple reason: Aboriginal people continue to live and to be born into situations with vastly inferior social services relative to even very near white communities. They have a historical legacy of underinvestment in infrastructure. Before you can throw them onto the current welfare system these infrastructure problems need to be resolved, and that requires investment. The investment has never happened, and needs to happen, and it won’t happen through the existing welfare system. For example, Aboriginal people often live in communities with no running water and limited housing, and this is for no more reason than that white governments refused to connect them to white infrastructure. It really is that simple – the pipes stop just short of the Aboriginal side of town. Why? Most of Australia’s infrastructure development has (as in Britain) been funded by the government, and the government refused to invest in Aboriginal communities during the time of great hygiene improvements (the first half of the 20th century). This isn’t your fault or mine, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the money saved on those infrastructure projects was spent in a way that benefited you and me (even if incrementally). So before we can tell that black man in Dubbo that he should access the same welfare system as us, we need to offer him the same infrastructure and cultural/social support that our communities enjoyed over 100 years.
In terms of the pacific war, what you suggest is the equivalent of Japan destroying Cebu and then telling the Philipinos that they can satisfy themselves with the international aid system. But they don’t have any infrastructure! And it’s not their fault, somebody bombed it! So surely Japan should repair the infrastructure to at least the level that the Phillipines’ unbombed neighbours have reached, and then say “there you go, now you can satisfy yourselves with the international aid system.” Similarly, I think, with the intergenerational legacy of genocide.
—
fn1: Older, no doubt. Bastards, the lot of them.
fn2: Or at least, the younger children[3]
fn3: I think it’s clear where I lie in the birth order
July 20, 2011 at 8:48 am
” But this doesn’t make the concept of reparation bad. Obviously if the welfare method you would like to use would be counter-productive you just… don’t use it.”
Not using a particular welfare method is a valid option is you’re providing welfare. But if you owe reparations to another group then it’s condescending to impose conditions on the payment method.
As such (and as you say), there is a fundamental difference between reparations and welfare. But difference is that reparations can’t easily have the controls you talk about for welfare. Specifically, the controls are the choice of the victimized group, which we agree is in a poor position to make this choice because of the original damage done to them.
The result of this is that reparations are a far more dangerous concept and one that is better abandoned in order to use the more constructive welfare model on the basis that a) you haven’t made a case that reparations are better administered or more just, and b) I’ve made a case that welfare is better administered.
” Applying it across generations is just a way of saying that a previous generation weren’t given justice, and their descendants suffered some economic disadvantage as a result while some other group gained an economic benefit, so some retribution should be made. Generally this takes on a redistributive form because the group of people who benefited is quite large and didn’t all benefit equally, and the pool of people who didn’t benefit is small and may have suffered very harshly. But that’s just a matter of calcluating who should pay and who should receive; it’s not a direct matter of redistributive justice, per se (I think).”
I disagree, saying there should be a progressive tax system (i.e. Australia) and that those payments should be spent on repayments to a disadvantaged group because of past wrongs (which is exactly what occurs if you have a separate system for Aborigines, as opposed to just “especially poor”), the same thing as making retributive justice. It’s just that there is a built in assumption that “those who are rich now have benefited from Aboriginal suffering/dispossession”, which may not hold true. But since when has justice cared if it’s assumptions hold true without a follow up court case to dispute it?
If you support distributive justice (I’ll use your terms), then why support retributive justice at all? If you embrace one or the other then you either end up with a) the payer at least free of obligation (libertarian ideal) or b) the payee enjoying a “fair” standard of living (socialist ideal). By mixing the two you end up with a payment that can be squandered that only makes the payer feel better, followed by a second payment that is required to improve the total outcomes.
Furthermore, as that’s explicitly the model you’re using, what incentive is there for the recipient to not act as I suggest? If they blow the entire initial payment on hookers and blow they know the next payment is coming, but if they use it to restore themselves to a “fair” condition they know they miss the payment. One option, comes with free hookers and blow – who in their right mind doesn’t take it?!
” So surely Japan should repair the infrastructure to at least the level that the Phillipines’ unbombed neighbours have reached, and then say “there you go, now you can satisfy yourselves with the international aid system.” Similarly, I think, with the intergenerational legacy of genocide.”
As I said earlier in this post, the retributive payment spending isn’t in the control of the payer, unless they’re using some method of force to control it [1]. So there is, as I said, a massive incentive to waste it. Furthermore, your statement that the Japanese owe the Phillipines “infrastructure to at least the level that the Phillipines’ unbombed neighbours have reached” means that if I bomb Mexico, I don’t owe it “what you had before, plus reasonable improvements that would have occurred”, I owe Mexico “America possibly followed by international aid payments”.
[1] Wave hello to the imperialist/colonialist attitude that you’re imposing. Then wonder how long it’s been sitting at the table with you.
July 23, 2011 at 6:11 am
Lynot’s reaction doesn’t surprise me; most Westerners simply cannot accept the facts about what our governments did in the Second World War (or the first, or anything else, come to that.) Emotions come in and the brain goes out.
A good review of a good book. And remember it’s still going on. What, did you think Australian forces in Afghanistan are delivering tea and dumplings?
July 27, 2011 at 10:50 am
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October 5, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Good post. I only quibble with your reference to Vietnam as an “invasion”. The North Vietnamese were not a legitimate group given the atrocities they committed, especially after their victory over the South. They deserved to lose because of their crimes and it’s a tragedy that they won.
October 10, 2011 at 8:24 am
“al Qaeda’s treachery on September 11th”
Al Qaeda had declared war on the United States several years previously, and had given the US the opportunity to surrender or convert to Islam, in accordance with the Koranic laws of war.
While the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan may have committed treacherous acts against the USA in connection with support for Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda itself has been an open enemy.
October 10, 2011 at 3:13 pm
“Al Qaeda itself has been an open enemy”
That’s a difficult case to make if their soldiers aren’t wearing a uniform. Believing that Al Qaeda is a valid enemy like another state also tends to suggest that combatants supporting it can be interred for the duration of the war, which means that Guantanamo Bay is OK.
October 10, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Al Qaeda is an open enemy but their terrorists don’t wear uniform, that means they don’t get Geneva Convention protections*; AIR when captured they could legally be executed as non-uniformed enemy combatants, as used to happen. Certainly holding Al Qaeda combatants in Guantanamo doesn’t violate any rules, though holding innocents who you wrongly believe are Al Qaeda terrorists might do.
Al Qaeda operates according to the Koranic laws of war, which require a declaration of war and a chance to submit prior to their attack. They don’t operate according to current Western norms, so they don’t need to wear uniforms, they don’t need to avoid attacks on civilians (although they should not target innocent Muslims), and they’re free to engage in offensive warfare vs non-Muslims. They certainly commit crimes according to Western norms – but not ‘treachery’. This differs from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which took place while Japan was officially at peace with the USA.
The core Al Qaeda of bin Laden & Zawahiri has made strong efforts to stick to Koranic mandates, as perceived by orthodox Sunni Muslims (so eg it’s ok to massacre Shia Muslims), and this has been one source of their popularity. Not all their subsidiaries have done so; the psychopath Zarqawi’s ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ committed numerous atrocities vs fellow Sunni Muslims in western Iraq and in Syria, which helped to undermine the status of Al Qaeda there.
*Geneva Convention protection can extend to non-state forces, but they have to wear an identifying insignia.
October 10, 2011 at 8:15 pm
S’mon, here is Article 5 of the third Geneva convention:
I’d also suggest you brush up on your understanding of the “Koranic laws of war” [sic], or at least admit that you’re not an expert on the laws of war or on the koran. This blog by the Dean of the Royal Air Force college might help you understand the Islamic context a little more. It’s important to remember as well that Islam doesn’t have a single authority like the pope or Rowan Williams. Your claim that the core of al Qaeda try to follow Koranic mandates is also pretty weak. They attacked non-combatants and merchants (the twin towers are the very definition of “merchant,” no?)
October 11, 2011 at 5:00 am
That article by the Dean of the RAF did include one line that gave me a good laugh:
“No-one would dream of calling Churchill warmongering, much less murderous”
Eh, right.
October 11, 2011 at 8:00 am
That is, the allied war planners and propagandists, and allied media, made clear both their deep hatred of the Japanese, its racial origins, and their belief that the only solution to the problem of Japanese aggression was extermination of the Japanese as a race. Obviously since the Japanese survived this goal was not enacted and cooler heads prevailed, but the propaganda that was driving the allied war effort in 1943-45 was genuinely disturbing stuff.
No Allied leader or war planner believed in the extermination of the Japanese as a race. That’s just utter bullshit and you should be called on it.
The Allied leadership did appalling things to the Japanese citizenry, and the propaganda was often disgusting, but the notion that “extermination of the Japanese as a race” was ever seriously on the agenda is complete bunk.
October 11, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Noisms, I’m not sure if you’re arguing here that a) they didn’t say these things or b) they said them but didn’t really mean them. Because they certainly said them, and surely one of the key lessons of the period from 1920 to the 1970s is that people really do mean what they say when they spout propaganda – this was also the point of my post on social scientists and propaganda, because at times allied leaders believed ideas about the Japanese that were counterproductive to their own war effort. Obviously, there’s some sense in which the allies didn’t “mean it,” since they won the war but didn’t exterminate the Japanese; but this doesn’t mean that it wasn’t “seriously on the agenda.” For example, they might have decided the only way to achieve this goal was to prosecute the war for another x months, and that they would thus have to divide Japan between the allies and the Soviet Union, and the goal wasn’t worth the loss; or they might have decided that a thoroughly defeated Japan, rebuilt, was a better bulwark against soviet “aggression” than an extinct Japan.
The evidence for exterminationist sentiment is certainly strong. From Power’s book: the Navy representative on the US govt committee assigned to study how Japan should be treated after the war called for “the almost total elimination of the Japanese as a race” (in May 1943) (he subsequently had to call a press conference to clarify that it was just his personal opinion, not policy). The chairman of the War Manpower Commission, Paul McNutt, is reported to have favored “the extermination of the Japanese in toto” (in 1945) and President Roosevelt’s son wanted to kill half of the population. Vice Admiral Radford said “Japan will eventually be a nation without cities – a nomadic people” just a few days before the first atomic bomb was dropped, and Churchill in a speech to congress demanded “the process, so necessary and desirable, of laying the cities and other munitions centres of Japan in ashes, for in ashes they must surely lie before peace comes back to the world.” Roosevelt’s chief of staff described Japan as “our Carthage.” British reports from the US in 1944 referred to a “universal ‘exterminationist’ anti-Japanese feeling” in the country. That is, the country whose PM had just given a speech demanding the complete destruction of all Japanese cities were worried about the degree of exterminationist sentiment amongst their allies. Do you think that all of this needs to be ignored, or do you think it represents a serious sentiment that was avoided at the last?
Anyway I think you’ve subtly misread me: there’s a world of difference between me saying war planners “believed that the only solution to the problem of Japanese aggression was extermination of the Japanese as a race” and saying that “extermination of the Japanese as a race was ever seriously on the agenda” (which is what you seem to be implying I said). Maybe you got that impression from my subsequent “cooler heads prevailed” comment?
Anyway, I’ve been promising it for weeks now but sometime this week I’m going to approach this issue directly, through a discussion of the possible role of allied war propaganda in decisions about the bombing campaigns (fire and nuclear). I suspect we’ll end up agreeing on the broad outline of that debate (I’m happy, as ever, to be proven wrong about what we’re likely to agree on) and any dispute here will just come down to an extended and pointless argument about what I meant when I wrote “cooler heads prevailed.”
If, on the other hand, your disagreement is a) then I hope the above quotes will settle it.
October 11, 2011 at 11:26 pm
The evidence for exterminationist sentiment is certainly strong.
No, you’ve cited a handful of statements by a handful of not particularly important people which seems to suggest there was a lot of hyperbole flying around at the time, and you’ve also cited a statement which seems to suggest that the US populace were largely sucked in by government propaganda.
Churchill is the only important policy maker who you included in your list, but he wasn’t espousing exterminationist sentiment in the line you quoted: he was talking about strategy. And it was a strategy which the Allies actually did employ in Japan. They did reduce the cites and munitions centres of Japan to ashes, yet that is clearly not the same thing as exterminating the Japanese as a race.
I’m afraid this just doesn’t constitute “strong evidence”.
surely one of the key lessons of the period from 1920 to the 1970s is that people really do mean what they say when they spout propaganda
No, this isn’t “one of the key lessons of the period”, because the case of Japan and the USA goes totally against your proposition: whatever the propaganda said, clearly the US establishment never intended to exterminate the Japanese race. You know how you can tell? The Japanese weren’t exterminated as a race. There were a lot of them living in the US at the time, you know, and quite a few of them fought for the US Army in the Western Theatre. Many of them were also treated badly. But none of them were ever under threat of extermination. Nor were the populace of Japan after the surrender.
There’s a lot to be said about the conduct of the Allied armies during WWII. Hyperbole like this post really just detracts from the sensible debate that should be had about the subject.
October 12, 2011 at 11:06 pm
I’m sorry Noisms but you’ve really lost it here. You’ve confused the words “sentiment” and “policy,” read things into my comment that can’t possibly be inferred, constructed a strawman of policy, misunderstood the meaning of “cooler heads prevailed,” and are just generally getting your knickers in a twist demanding evidence in support of something I never claimed. I said “sentiment.” Go figure out what “sentiment” means, how it is distinguished from “seriously on the agenda,” (which is what you seem to think I said), revise your understanding of the word “evidence” in connection with the concept of “sentiment,” and then get back to me.
October 13, 2011 at 10:43 pm
Did you or did you not write the words:
This section makes clear that the allied response to Japanese aggression was both furious and exterminationist in its content. That is, the allied war planners and propagandists, and allied media, made clear both their deep hatred of the Japanese, its racial origins, and their belief that the only solution to the problem of Japanese aggression was extermination of the Japanese as a race.
?
And do you see how your comment at No. 25 is not “strong evidence” of this? Do you also admit that you were basically running your mouth off without thinking when you wrote the post, because let’s face it, saying that the Allied war planners wanted to exterminate the Japanese sounds good to self-disgusted Westerners? Even if it flies in the face of the evidence?
October 15, 2011 at 3:36 pm
[…] were influenced by the extreme propaganda about Japan. We have established that there was an eliminationist sentiment to this propaganda, that it was extremely racist and that the underlying principles of the […]