Attitudes toward the Japanese?

As mentioned elsewhere, I frequently hear/read that the American thought of the Japanese as "monkeys" or worse. This is just one more item to ponder when we hear such:

Full text:

The Struggle is for Survival​

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING AND PERSONNEL​

By LIEUTENANT GENERAL LESLEY J. McNAIR, U. S. ARMY, Commanding General, Army Ground Forces​

Armistice Day Address to Troops of the Army Ground Forces, Over Blue Network from Washington, D. C., November 11, 1942 ​

 

Excellent article OP. McNair makes some cogent points, but I also think that many in the US were caught up in the casual racism of the day, and were often swayed by some rather awful propaganda. While the upper echelons of the US Army may have had this view, I tend to think that the rank and file was more touched by the less savory view of the Japanese. I just finished reading Japan's Imperial Army by Edward Drea (Amazon.com: Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945 (Modern War Studies) (9780700616633): Edward J. Drea: Books), and he has some less than glowing things to say about the way the IJA was led and trained. McNair is correct when he talks about the goal of encirclement that the IJA favored, but when it failed, they had a tendency to revert to frontal assault, that frequently led to slaughter on a grand scale. This happened repeatedly in China, long before it was tried on US troops. Nonetheless, this was an interesting contemporary view. Thanks.

 

Very true about the casual racism. But, as I said elsewhere, you don't teach your soldiers to think the enemy is a pushover, that way leads to disaster. The people who talk the drivel I mention in the OP seem to have researched three or four propaganda posters and made up their minds from that "in-depth" investigation.

 

I think this is an important observation. Too many, I think, still buy into the notion of the inferiority of the Japanese military without doing any real reading or examination. My guess is that any solider or marine who originally believed in Japanese inferiority, despite warnings to the contrary, would quickly be disabused of that notion after first contact.

I am only beginning to do some reading on the Pacific War, and I am astounded at some of the comments I have seen in other posts. I hesitate to post myself until I have done some more reading and research. That's just my old teaching background showing through.

 

If you read through this, HyperWar: Handbook on Japanese Military Forces, and the matching one for the German forces, you'll note that there is much respect for the enemy. These books were for the guys on the pointy end of the stick, not the armchair generals at home.

 

Thanks for the link. Looks like more required reading. Right into my bookmarks.

 

I'm adding ~2,000 speeches to the parent site there. I'm into November, 1942 right now. Need more non-US material, obviously. I have Mackensie King in the wings, as well as Halifax and Winnie, of course.

 

I think the attitude at the time (during the War), was mostly propaganda inspired. Where the real hatred started was when news got back or after the troops began arriving back in the States and relating what they had seen and endured. Brndirt1's new thread:
http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/40956-pow-survivor-finally-tells-story.html
explains just how this would stir up anyone's emotions.

 

Propaganda is all about pushing buttons. Folks like Elmer Davis were very good at it. (If you don't know Elmer Davis, he was one of the radio broadcasters in "The Day The Earth Stood Still", the older gentleman.) I wish I had the time to dive into this topic better. I'd like to know how they decided where certain posters were to be displayed. Did the roughest ones go to industrial plants? What was "okay" for schools? What was used on public transit? And so on.

I need a few more lives.

 

Younger Americans have a passion for anime, and find Japan fascinating, I think. There's little or no lingering hard feelings about the war that I've noted. Certainly the volume of sales of Japanese cars would back that up, I think.

The Army-Navy Journals for the first two years of the direct US invovlement in the war are on the stacks. I'll blend the articles from those into the above site. These items were for direct consumption by the troops and are thus a more direct read of what opinions were trying to be shaped by the senior people. Lots of different countries represented in those Journals, btw.

I'm planning on finishing out the Vital Speeches, another 1,500 pages minimum of material there, then going back and finding the missing items from non-US heads-of-state and senior political figures. Then the Journals. This will doing "hot" items for the Navy and "other government entities".

 

? Is there a problem? (Other than I'm a daft bastard, of course. )

 

Sorry about that. We use the best copies we can find. Sometimes we're using the ONLY copy of a document. I often note that we "got there just in time" as the document ceases to exist in paper by the time we've got it on disk.