John Dower’s book War Without Mercy
The wonderful online exhibit Dr. Suess Went to War also has a wonderful catalog of the kinds of images found depicting the enemy, including a whole section on Japan.
Many of the propaganda images dehumanize the enemy by portraying them as some kind of animal, monster, or insects. They go well beyond the kind of racial caricatures of the enemy that depict certain racial stereotypes in terms of exaggerated features. The latter can be found not only in propaganda images but was used even in official documents. To take one example of this I recently came across, the cover for 1945 Field Order 31 of the US 8th Army, which contained instructions for the early occupation of the Japanese islands, shows the 8th Army, represented by a large arrow, attacking the protruding ass of a Japanese soldier, depicted with standard slanted eyes and enlarged teeth.1
As Dower and many others have pointed out, the more dehumanizing portrayals of the enemy create an environment in which the soldier feels that the enemy race is itself a kind of disease or vermin that needs to be exterminated. Though examples abound, I recently came across a particularly elaborate example of this that I had never seen before and which I thought I would share: A “License to Hunt Japanese” issued to an American who did not fight in the Pacific War but would later serve as a US advisor in occupation Japan. The image and accompanying text simultaneously captures a number of the features found in the more disturbing propaganda images.
Full size version of the image can be seen here.2
The license, clearly designed to be a work of humor, is stamped by a fictional “Department of Jap Extermination” in the “Alaska Sanitation Commmission,” which is said to have as its motto, “Exterm the worm.” Imitating a hunting license, it declares an “open season” on the Japanese, with “no limit.”
Japanese are not the only ones mentioned or depicted in this mock hunting license. The body of the license, which refers to the Japanese as “genus bastardi” and “black-livered Japanese,” announces that “Germans taken incidental to the hunt will be counted two for one in claiming bounty. Italians will not be counted.”
UPDATE: I received an email which pointed out that the image of the soldier in the first image is a most likely a caricature of Hirohito.
Robert Eichelberger Papers Box 62. Microfilm version: Japan and America, c1930-1955: the Pacific War and the occupation of Japan. Series 1 Reel 31 ↩
I have blurred out the names on the license and I’d rather not publish the origins of the document here. Contact me if you want more information on how to find the original document. ↩
Interesting: the Alaska theme is particularly interesting. A lot of work went into a local joke!
It’s interesting how caricature themes of the original enemy, the Nazi Germans, appear to have been transferred over to the Japanese. How similar were the two? The similarities of the German and Japanese caricatures suggest that the U.S. truly did have little knowledge of the Japanese.
That is interesting. I don’t know. Do you have some examples of caricatures of the Germans from the time?
I think the cartoon representation is Gen. (?) Tojo, considering apparent military uniform.
(I was living in Honolulu in the early ’40s and at least there the difference between the Japanese military and the Emperor was known, besides Tojo was easier to spell! I was in elementary school with Japanese-American classmates. My father was an engineer and commissioned officer with the Navy and had skilled Japanese-American workers on repair crews. Japanese-Americans in Hawai’i were not interned, and I could not understand why they were interned if they lived on the mainland – a truly stupid waste of resources. In the late ’40s my father served in Japan, at Yokosuka, I think occupying the office of his Japanese counterpart.)
I am interested to know the value of a Japaneese Hunting License I have.It says open season on the yellow bellies and keep em fleeing and no bag limit Go Get em. On the back it saysThis Card is sold for the benefit of a Disabled American Soldier of the Last War we thank you THE BOYS.Would you happen to know where I could find out how much its worth,not that I would sell it but im just interested?