Twentieth Century Currents:
"Race" and "Nation," across the World Wars

Part One: "Race"
(part one presented on March 17, 1999
at North Georgia College and State University)

Introduction

As we approach the twenty-first century, besides hearing about the Y2K problem, we have begun to hear a few reflections on the century as a whole. Recently a group of veteran journalists and historians voted on the century's top 100 news stories to be included in a new interactive news museum, a "newseum," near Washington, D.C.¹ The leading news event of the century is the bombing of Hiroshima, the second is Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, and the third is Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Some day, forty or fifty years from now, our children or grandchildren may enter this newseum and stroll along the multi-media displays, reflecting on the big events of the distant twentieth century.

1. The bombing of Hiroshima will certainly grab their attention. 100,000 died in the first explosion of a nuclear weapon to, "end the war quickly and save American lives," if that is still the most common explanation given in American schools." ²
2. Walking on the moon. They might still say, "cool!," before moving on.
3. Pearl Harbor: the Japanese sneak attack. Some might think, "That wasn't fair!" Maybe they will make some kind of connection between Pearl Harbour and the American bombing of Hiroshima as retribution. Or maybe they will skip over Pearl Harbor altogether. After all, it was just a military attack on an American base on territory seized by the American marines forty-seven years earlier. Hawaii only became a state in 1958.

Is that how best to remember the history of the twentieth century, as a series of startling events? Maybe it is the best way. Each event offers simple moral lessons and inspirations. Some students, though, will want to know more. Why did Pearl Harbor offend Americans so much and drive them eventually to drop a nuclear bomb on a largely civilian population. They might discover the debate over what the Americans did know about Japanese military plans, including the bombing of Pearl Harbour.³ The students might laugh when they find out that among the American intelligence at the time, many thought the Japanese incapable of building reliable air craft or even flying at night because of defects in their race. The British and even the Germans were baffled when the Japanese sunk British ships in the Philippines and proceeded to take over most of the South Pacific islands early in the war. Some British military intelligence thought the Germans must have flown the planes.⁴

Currents

If the curious student continued to probe further into the twentieth century, he or she might find that the century was largely driven by currents of racial theories and related ranking of the peoples of the world according to skin color, eye shape, and ethnicity. Forty or fifty years from now, this should be hard for a young person to believe (or maybe not!).

Taking a longer perspective, a student in the twenty-first century might see the twentieth century from the backdrop of the 18th and 19th centuries, when the world economy finally began to catch up with the Liberal eighteenth century Nationalist ideals of the French and American revolutions -- the Rights of Man and representation of all peoples through a democratic form of government. The Industrial Revolution, the Colonial legacy and related pseudo-scientific theories of racial evolution in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century may have merely eclipsed those ideals.⁵

At the turn of the twentieth century, those nations who had managed to industrialize (Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, the United States, Russia, and Japan), raced to capture resources in foreign non-industrialized lands. Most did not consider the justice of injustice of imperialism because most believed thought that those with technology had a prerogative to dominate the weak as a natural process of evolution. In part protect their colonial gains they made in the "Great Game" of imperialism, the players fought the Great War, the First World War. Ironically, they had to even enlisted the help of subject peoples of their colonies, promising them self-determination after victory. These ideals proved premature, however, as the failure of Wilson's ideals in the Fourteen Points and the Japanese proposal for a racial equality clause proved. After the war, the industrialized nations continued on their same paths of imperialism to secure as many resources for their piece of the world economy as possible. The Great Depression only accelerated the struggle for more resources.

Industrialized nations continued trying to prove their prominence among the world's races and nations. The national machinery of government-controlled media and public schools, perfected during the First World War, cultivated national myths and ugly stereotypes of the Other as the world headed for the Second World War.

A collection of images by John W. Dower (pp.181-200), from media sources in Japan and the United States during the Second World War show examples of national propaganda, and how national policy reflected misapplied Darwinian theories and racial-national mythologies.

The Japanese View

A. Throughout the 14 year war in Japan beginning with China in 1931, the Japanese government used the public schools and the media, to appeal to the public to "purify" themselves and realize the true heart of the Japanese, or the Yamato, as they referred to their collective 2600 year old history. This cartoon is titled "Purging One's Head of Anglo-Americanism:" Get rid of the dandruff encrusting your head!" The scurf being combed out is identified as extravagance, selfishness, hedonism, liberalism, materialism, money worship, individualism, and Anglo American ideas. For much of the twentieth century, theories of Modernization, including Marxist theory, saw human progress exclusively following British and American models of industrialization. full image

B. In the next three images, the leaders of America, Britain, China, and the Dutch (Holland), the A,B,C,D leaders (Roosevelt for America, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, and Holland as a wooden shoe are revealed in various forms exposing the contradictions in their foreign policy, etc. While Britain, the U.S., and France preached freedom and democracy, they controlled many non-industrial parts of the world militarily, and imposed unfair immigration quotas on non-Caucasian races deemed undesirable.

1. In the first image from January 1942, the purifying sun of Japanese glory dispels the ABCD powers. America and Britain are thugs (the crown of Jewish -- "J" -- plutocracy is falling from America's head). China is a sprawling figure with Chiang Kai-shek's face -- and a stubby tail, a bestial mark often attached to the Nationalist Chinese. All that remains of the Dutch is a wooden shoe.
2. In the next (mid 1942) image, the Allied leaders are Napoleonic megalomaniacs, trampling on the oppressed (and typically dark) natives of Asia underfoot.
3. In the third image (January 1942), titled "Horses Legs, Badger's Tail," the cartoonist uses folk idioms for exposing deceptive appearances to the outbreak of the war. Japan's planes have revealed that the pious Churchill really has the hindquarters of the cunning badger and is clothed in death, while Padre Roosevelt has a horse's backside (like the English "cloven hoof") and a crucifix for a dagger, and his real clothing is the almighty dollar. all of the images

C. The next image is a parody of Millet's famous painting, "The Angelus," Roosevelt and Churchill are the farmer and his wife, chained together above their helpless offspring Chiang Kai-Shek at their feet as they pray against a field of slaughtered bodies. A flag of surrender hangs from the pitchfork. In the same theme, the following comic strip describes a defeated Chiang being aided by Roosevelt and Churchill. In the right hand bottom corner of the last image, two black men are elated with Japan's knockout victory over Roosevelt and Churchill. There was some support for Japan among people of color in America during the initial phases of the war. Early in the war, Japan tried with some success to cultivate ties with black groups in the U.S., including the Muslim League (all of the images). A recent study of African-American attitudes during the war concludes that over fifty percent of Blacks believed that Japanese rule would be no worse than the white rule at the time..⁶

D. Here's a parody (January 1942) of the statue of liberty, titled the "Grieving Statue of Liberty." Roosevelt, waving the slogan "democracy" while holding the club of "dictatorship,"appears in the classic guise of a demon. America's decadence is represented by the the figures on Liberty's crown: the carousing "anti-war" sailor; the fettered figure of "military action;" the strident worker waving a "strike" placard; and the clownish "Jew," inflating the balloon of profits disguised as the American flag. The "2601" above the artist's signature is the year (1941) in the new nationalistic calendar adopted by the Japanese, based on the divine origins of the imperial line. full image

E. The Japanese used propaganda against the Anglo-American oppressors in India and Southeast Asia, but the alternative of Japanese control over these regions was no no less condescending toward the native peoples. Small horns protrude from under Churchill's hat. The title reads, "Now is the time to rise!!" Greater East Asia Holy War. In the next image, another white hand reaches down to the obliged dark skinned native as a Dutch girl runs away in the distance. The Co-Prosperity Sphere was supposed to show the moral superiority of the Japanese as the true leaders of the region. The Japanese, however had no higher ideal of the Rights of Man than the Western nations they sought to replace. all of the images

F. Toward the end of the war, Japanese propaganda portraying American and British atrocities increased to prepare citizens for the battle on the homefront. In the last image the famous warrior, the peach boy (MOMOTARO), is summoned to fight the Western devils. all of the images

The U.S. View

On the other side of the ocean, images in the U.S. media reflect American outrage that an Asian people could threaten American Manifest Destiny. In 1941, Hawaii was an island held militarily by the U.S., and it had a larger Asian and Hawaiian population than Caucasian one. The three Japanese language newspapers in Honolulu during the war ran articles favorable to the Japan's initial victories during the war and many Japanese returned to Japan to fight. After the war the survivors returned to Hawaii and were quickly reassimilated into the community.

A. Dower comments on a cartoon published three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor:

. . . it symbolized well how the surprise attack became an indelible symbol of Japanese treachery in the United States, and inspired immediate commitment to a vengeful war without mercy. Japanese military planners, obsessed with operational issues and misled by disdainful stereotypes of Americans as decadent and egocentric, gave virtually no thought to the psychological consequences of their decision to attack the U.S. fleet". image

B. Before the attack, the Japanese were represented as lesser men, or monkeys. After the attack and the initial Japanese victories in the South Pacific, the "Yellow Peril" image becomes popular and the monkey turns into a King Kong like image representing the "Jap Hordes. all of the images

C. In this series of images, one can see the progression of treacherous images from monkeys to vermin, and finally the transformation during the war to a charming pet. In the first image, Japan's atrocities in the Philippines are attributed to mimicking Germany's atrocities in Czechoslovakia. all of the images

D. A significant transformation occurred during the war in Western views of the Other, from racial stereotypes based on pseudo-scientific Darwinian theories. During the war and into the post-war period, theories regarding the Japanese changed from being deficient racially to being misguided culturally. Ruth Benedict and others in the field of Anthropology and Psychology peoples were different not because of racial types, but because of cultural and institutional development. The Japanese were moving toward modern civilization at a slower pace and, under appropriate guidance from the west, could move their even faster. full image

Such images and stereotypes of the Other (racial and ethnic) during wartime can not look too dissimilar from the Serbian attitudes toward ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Unequal immigration policy prejudiced against Asian countries, segregation policies against African- Americans throughout most of the century, repression of people because of their political beliefs during the First World War, and internment of ethnic groups during the First and Second World Wars, would make Milosovic feel at home, and might make our current NATO campaigns appear a little hypocritical to the cynical observer.⁷

Conclusion

One should not be too cynical about the status of American human rights at the end of the twentieth century, however. The First and Second World Wars and the related wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the propaganda during wartime -- that America was fighting for national self-determination, human rights and democracy -- showed contradictions in American domestic and foreign policy which, consequently, stimulated popular movements for social and legal reconciliation. The Civil Rights movement in America, and movements for human rights and self-determination formed the basis of the new United Nations. Segregation between white and black soldiers through the Second World War was eliminated in the post-war period in the military and in society at large. In Western academia, anthropologists began speaking of world cultures rather than races. And with the disrepute of social and national Darwinism and the related Modernization theory, even the Western notion of world history and modernity came to include other narratives besides the traditional Euro-centric one which had dominated institutions of public education throughout its century-long history. The tragic events of the First and Second World Wars put an imperative on this change. Taken out of the context of this flow of history and our very different view of race in the 1940, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and its corollary, Hiroshima, would probably not have occurred. One could also ask the question whether the Genocide of Jews in Eastern Europe would have occurred. Certainly, racial, now more commonly called, ethnic prejudice, still occurs, but at least it appears to be less of a catalyst in world history than it was across the First and Second World War.

The significance of "nation" as well has seen great change over the course of the century. While it was a benign political term, used by the new middle class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nation has become a charged term denote a wide range of meaning -- from liberal democracy to fascism. Campaigns of exclusionary-nationalism, led by government-controlled forms of propaganda, mass media and public education, continue to create and/or perpetuate irreconcilable views of the Other, as racism did in America and Japan during the first half of the twentieth century. The result has been increasing debate among historians regarding the changing significance of nationalism. This is the subject of part two, "Nation"

Part 2 / Teaching the Wars / Research

Endnotes

1. Although they do not mention the names or numbers of the veteran journalist and historians surveyed, the project is directed by the non-profit Freedom Forum organization and sponsored by USA Weekend at http://www.newseum.org/century/100stories/100index.htm (view the page in a new window here.) You can also vote on the top news stories of the century from this site. back to text
2. This was the only explanation I was given as a middle and high school student in Dunwoody, Georgia (1976-1983). There are more complex methods of teaching about the bombing used in many schools that I surveyed as part of my research in this class. They are reviewed in another paper currently being written, titled, "Teaching the World Wars." back to text.
3. Try to disprove the argument that President Roosevelt was well aware of Japan's plans at the site "Pearl Harbor, Mother of all Controversies," at http://www.clinton.net/~mewilley/pearl.html (view the page in a new window here). back to text
4.   John W. Dower's reviews these and more startling observations in his book, War Without Mercy (Pantheon: 1986) back to text.
5. A general argument in the shift in thinking about race across the World Wars can be found in Elazar Barkan's The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars (Cambridge, 1992). The syllabi and bibliography for a course called, "The Politics of Race," taught at the University of Warwick can be found at http://members.tripod.com/~rlekhi/UKlectures.html (view the page in a new window here). An explanation of Victorian racism can be found on the Victorian web site http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/race/rc5.html (open it in a new window here). back to text.
6. African American Views of the Japanese: Solidarity or Sedition? (Suny Series, Global Conflict and Peace Education), by Reginald Kearney and Betty Reardon (State University of New York Press: 1998). back to text
7. David M. Kennedy, in Over Here: The First World War and American Society, (Oxford, 1980), documents the repression of dissidents in America during the First World War. During the Second World War, human rights violations are evidenced in the internment of Japanese, Germans, and Italian-Americans in camps. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar, (Bantam, 1973) documents well the internment of a Japanese-American family in California. back to text

Part 2 / Teaching the Wars / Research