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John Dower's War Without Mercy

Decent Essays

“Japanese were perceived as animals, reptiles, or insects (monkeys, baboons, gorillas, dogs, mice and rats, vipers and rattlesnakes, cockroaches, vermin- or, more indirectly “the Japanese herd” and the like)… at the simplest level, they dehumanized the Japanese and enlarged the chasm between ‘us’ and ‘them’ to the point where it was perceived to be virtually unbridgeable.”(Dower 81-82) John Dower, the writer of War Without Mercy, focused part of his book on the way the Japanese in American culture were viewed by the public and the other part on the way the Americans were viewed by the Japanese in their culture. Each chapter in Dower’s book is titled in a way so that they describe how the Japanese and Americans were viewed by each other’s culture. During WWII the Japanese were not the only culture that was viewed poorly, the Americans were also viewed very poorly while in the Japanese public culture. Race played a very large role in the war in the Pacific during WWII. The Japanese were identified with animals most commonly apes or vermin; and the Americans were identified as demons by the Japanese. The racial stereotypes between the Japanese and the Americans never went away they just adapted as time went …show more content…

The Japanese described their allies, the Americans, as “burglars, unshaved capitalist, and unregenerate racists” the Japanese also described the Americans as “demons, devils, fiends, and monsters… more elaborate variations were hobgoblins and hairy, twisted-nosed savages.” (Dower 244) The Japanese did not view the Americans as good people, they believed that the demons had to be exorcised, and it was often argued that they had to be completely destroyed. (Dower

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