Before the Bomb: How American Approached the End of the Pacific War (1987)

The book talks about how Americans viewed Germans and Japanese. Americans tended to separate what they termed “good” and “bad” Germans. It was the “bad” Germans who were responsible for the persecution of the Jews and other Nazi atrocities, but the “good” Germans were not really involved in any of that.

Japanese were not divided into two separate groups, though, one of the reasons possibly being that the victims of Japanese atrocities were sometimes Americans. A noted historian, Allan Nevins, said: “Probably, in all our history no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese.”

He added: “Emotions forgotten since our most savage Indian wars were reawakened.”

A Life magazine editorial in May, 1945, said that “...hating Japs comes natural-as natural as fighting Indians once was.”

The Japanese were pictured as monkeys and rodents. They were thought of as “primitive, militaristic, irrational savages with illogical thought patterns.” This approach was easily seen in various advertisements of the time and on the many posters for the war, along with cartoon portrayals. (These are elsewhere on my war page.)

A different historian, John Dower, said that the attack on Pearl Harbor “provoked a rage bordering on the genocidal...”

(Why is any of this important? Because it influenced the way the US conducted the war. For one thing, it was hatred of Orientals, including Japanese, that led to the interment of persons of Japanese ancestry, some 110 to 120 thousand people being moved from their homes and businesses and placed into interment camps.)

(Second, it helped lead to the saturation incendiary bombing and the dropping of the atomic bombs, since killing Japanese was considered something few people had any problems with. Hate, especially if it is intense enough, can cause people to do horrible things, using their hatred as a justification.)

(Although Americans didn't really understand the Japanese and why they did things, the Japanese were basically as ignorant about Americans and why they did things the way they did. This played a large part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, since the Japanese had no idea at all about just how angry Americans would get over the attack.)

The Japanese were referred to as “Japs” and “nips.” The Japanese were dehumanized in the eyes of Americans, which made it easier to kill both soldiers and civilians, this being a reason why there really wasn't any outcry over the tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of Japanese civilians killed in the firebombing.

Killing Japanese was compared to hunting and was even termed “prairie dog warfare.”

The book notes that the terrible treatment of American prisoners of war by the Japanese, (including beheadings, etc.) helped to keep the anger of Americans very high. The Japanese were seen as inherently brutal savages.

The book also notes that, since Americans did not really know very much about Japan or its culture, it was easier for them to accept stereotypes of the Japanese that became prevalent in the movies, cartoons, and written works.

The book spends some time talking about a seven-part series that was run in Newsweek magazine, and was written by Maj. Compton Pakenham, who was a British military officer and who spent six months working with a Japanese military unit before the war.

He said of the Japanese: “In his native habitat the Jap is roughly kind, hospitable, considerate and generous. His humor is animal, and he loves laughter, gambling and drinking.”

Once the Japanese soldier gets sent abroad, however, he “begins by slapping the faces of white women and ends up a devil incarnate, boasting of what he did at Nanking, Hong Kong and Manila.”

He said that the myth of Hirohito's divinity had to be disproved in order to eventually win the war.

There were also some very strange broadcasts from Tokyo, at least as far as logic goes. One went along this lines; the incendiary bombing was a good thing because it helped raise civilian morale by “relieving individuals of concern about their personal belongings.” Course, those people were probably dead from the bombings themselves.

The Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, apparently was in favor of considering the use of poison gas against the Japanese. Later, plans were drawn up for the use of chemical warfare against enemy positions. If Operation Coronet would have been done, then there would have been much more pressure for the use of poison gases, and, if used, civilian casualties would have been high.

Consideration of a siege against Japan was tempered by the belief that such a siege could take several years to finally cause Japan to surrender.

Apparently, people didn't pay much attention to civilian casualties in all the saturation bombing.

The Washington Post, though, called it “terror bombing,” and noted we condemned it when it was done by our enemies against our allies, but now we supported it when we were doing it against our enemies.

Col. Alfred F. Klaberer said Japan should be bombed until it became “a beautiful desert.”

An unnamed Air Force officer said “There are no civilians in Japan.”

Adm. Jonas H. Ingram said “If it is necessary to win the war, we shall leave no man, woman or child alive in Japan and shall erase that country from the map.”

Denunciations of the incendiary bombing in the papers came from the Christian Century,, mainly, although other Protestant publications also criticized the bombing.

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