War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

In his 1986 nonfiction work War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian John W. Dower investigates the racism between the United States and the Empire of Japan, as it existed before, during, and after the Second World War.

The very nature and understanding of who the enemy was, for both the Anglo-Americans and the Japanese, presented in many forms. On the American side, there was an important series of films by the American director, Frank Capra, entitled Know Your Enemy, to name one. The Japanese had their own forms, such as the document titled The Way of the Subject, which focused less on who the enemy was but rather who the Japanese were and why it was important for them to fight. All the propaganda involved a form of racism, and this racism was a large component of the brutal and merciless nature of the Second World War.

Western views of not only the Japanese, but also other Asiatic peoples, the Chinese for example, have a long history that predates World War II by several centuries. The Anglo-Americans often viewed the Japanese as subhuman beings, such as monkeys and apes. At times they were viewed as something like supermen in the early years of the war, but this coincided with the perception of them being something other, possessing traits or powers that true humans did not possess. In the 19th and 20th-centuries, these views took on a scientific element as the Japanese and other Asians were described and "scientifically proven" to be primitives, children, or even mentally unstable madmen. All of this culminated in a fear known as the Yellow Peril, a fear of a modernized, unified Asian population that not only could challenge but also defeat Western world hegemony.

On the other side of the Pacific, the Japanese engaged in their own forms of racism. Japanese forms mirrored, in some ways, European racism. Like the Nazis, the Japanese preached that their race, the Yamato race, was a pure race. The Japanese argued, using mythology, folklore, and science to back up this claim. For example, it was believed that the first Emperor of Japan, Jimmu, was a son of the war goddess, Amaterasu. In science, it was argued the Japanese, as an isolated island nation that practiced isolationism, simply had less miscegenation than others. In regard to others, specifically the Anglo-American enemy, they weren't viewed necessarily as inferior beings, rather as demonic beings that possessed a dualistic nature. They were powerful, proven through the military and technological advancements, but also treacherous, devious, and corrupting. Moreover, the Japanese possessed a world view based on a Confucian idea known as "proper place." During the war, the Japanese argued and believed that it was their proper place to rule and govern the world and that others' proper place tended to be to serve and provide for Japan. This belief, along with a plan, was written down in a multi-volume work with the overall title of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus.

The hatred and brutality of the war was almost paradoxically and rather quickly replaced after the Japanese surrender. Dower argues that an answer to how such hatred could be pushed aside in the name of peace is found in the dualistic nature of racism itself. Racism is flexible and mutable; it can be inverted and refocused on a new and different foe. Racist beliefs did not end even after the Japanese and Anglo-Americans learned to cooperate and become allies. As soon as economic tensions arose in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the racist code words and images used to describe one another during the war resurfaced.