Comic Books Covers section 5

This part is on enemy atrocities, breaking the rules of warfare. Propaganda depicted the enemy as evil and with goals that threatened our way of life.

The enemy could be depicted as animals, as subhumans, even as monsters.

Japanese propaganda taking the same approach.

Historical events can also be used to demonize the enemy.

Showing a brutal act that the Japanese soldiers performed on American soldiers.

Another actual event used to stir up hatred of the Japanese.

After you demonize the enemy to a point it's easy to think of the use of anything to stop the spread of it's terror. Where the normal person would not even consider killing another person, the propaganda made it seem find to them to kill as many of the enemy as possible (or at least have someone else doing the killing.)

Hitler being shown as a devil.

He says there was a difference between how German atrocities and Japanese atrocities were described.

Japanese are pictured here as executing captured American soldiers. Nazis, though, were singled out for their mistreatment of civilians in the countries they had invaded.

Since most people's ancestors did not come from the Orient there was much less interest in what happened to the civilians there and interest centered on what the Japanese did to American soldiers that they captured.

The Japanese were often depicted as breaking the rules of warfare.

Women in peril was frequently used on covers.

Another woman threatened by a Japanese soldier.

Covers using Nazis showed women being used for experiments or as hostages, while Japanese-oriented covers showed leering Japanese soldiers about to do things to the woman. Women, he says, were generally, though, pictured as being killed or going to be killed by the enemy rather than used sexually.

Another way women were pictured as being used by the Japanese.

Nurses were used on posters and in comics in danger as this helped to demonize the enemy even further.

Here a nurse has been captured and it seems the Japanese plane to bayonet her. The enemy were also seen to be attacking ambulances and ships with the Red Cross symbol on them.

This one is about children and senior citizens in peril. He say this was one way of showing the enemy as basically evil.

Here's a cover where children are in danger due to the Japanese.

Here's one where Nazis threaten children.

Here an elderly person is threatened.

Some comics showed groups of people about to be executed.

Mistreatment of an killing of American soldiers and nurses was also used as a propaganda device.

The Bataan Death March.

A cover showing a Japanese plane trying to machine gun a soldier. These covers were sometimes based on actual facts.

Japanese torturing captured Americans.

Banned weapons such as poisonous gas were shown on some covers.

Jars of biological weapons.

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