The war between Japan and USA was not any ordinary war like any other which was mainly based on power and leadership. According to Dower, this conflict was fueled to the heights of the unforgettable Atomic bombing by the US on Japan by o9ther factors other than power and show of military might. The reason said to be behind this is racial discrimination. The difference in race is between the Americans who believe to be whites and Japanese who are believed to be apes and primitive creatures. This racial difference which appeared to exist even before the First World War thus took the full responsibility of the fight (Dower, 112).
Trying to review Dower’s book, let’s try to analyze the book so as to come up with a similar or closely related but more elaborated conclusion. The conclusion should form the topic sentence in an attempt to determine its validity. In the article, the hypothesis is stated in the first chapter. In the book and article, the author wrote ‘ World War Two contributed immeasurably to not only a sharpened awareness of racism within the United States, but also to more radical demands and militant tactics in them part of the victims of discrimination’ (Dower, 5). This sentence offers an introductory note that makes the reader to have enough curiosity and urge to know the truth about the origin of the fight and hence forms our thesis statement.
Analyzing the book in parts, the first chapter sets a platform ready for a turning point of the origin of Second World War from power to racial discrimination. The chapter offers some eye opener ideas that the whole book builds on. The chapter introduces the whole idea of racism and how it existed even before the Second World War and then narrows down to the Japanese-American racial conflict and ideological differences. The Japanese claim that the Americans call them apes and sub humans. The Japanese hit back by claiming that Americans are monsters and devils (Dower, 12). This sets the whole mood of racial conflict in the book. In the second chapter, more is elaborated on the racial discrimination. In America, a film on learning how to fight entitled ‘Know your Enemy – Japan’ is drafted and later released. This movie is more of a propaganda that tries to sore the relationship which was already sore between the Japanese and the Americans. By putting a title and containing the name Japan and depicting the country as the enemy heightens the racial hatred. In the movie as analyzed by the book, the movie depicts the Japanese to be weak and thus had to be shown sympathy.
As it is in war, one should not kill a fighter who has surrendered. The American government did not like this particular part since they believed Japanese were not people who needed any sympathy. They were just good for nothing apes and super humans who had invaded the earth thus should be treated without any sympathy. The chapter also analyses the ‘Japan propaganda against the Americans’ and compares it to the German assault on America giving reasons as to why the Japan assault was propaganda and the German not. The reasons depicted in the chapter are also based on racial discrimination (Dower, 24). The first reason provided was that the Japanese were only one race thus the whole of the Japanese race was bad.
On the side of Germans, there were two races; the Nazis and the Germans. This made the Americans claim that some people in Germany were good (Germans) while others were bad (Nazis) (Dower 30). This can be claimed to be the reason behind the Americans fighting the German Nazis and Japanese while avoiding a conflict with the other members of Soviet Union during the Second World War. It might also be extended to cover the reason for the splitting of Germany according to races after world war two. The second reason depicted from the text is that the Japanese assaulted the Americans directly while the Germans didn’t do it directly (Dower 35). Therefore, the writer analyses the war crimes that were committed by Japan, Germany and lastly the Americans. The chapter also analyses three arguments that revolve around extermination of Japan. The main ideas include: Suicide psychology, lessons from world war one and Psychological purge (Dower, 56). These three chapters form the book section that paints a vivid picture of an enemy.
The second part of the book entitled ‘the war in the American eyes’ consists of the next three chapters and mainly focuses on the type of war that should be meted on the enemy. In chapter four, the author depicts the dehumanization that the Americans treated the Japanese with. They claim that the Japanese are subhuman, equal or even less than animals and creatures that should never a say in the society (Dower 73).
Chapter five analyses the initial war between the Americans who were backed by the Britons and the Japanese. The supermen (Americans and Britons) underestimate the Japanese power (lesser men) and this leads to initial Japanese victory making the super men change the nick name of the Japanese from sub humans to super humans.
Chapter six analyses the biological make-up of the Japanese. It analyses various structures and organs in a bid to certify that Japanese are really human beings and not the primitive childish and insane creatures that the Americans had taken them for. This information is expounded on and illustrated using examples in the following chapter.
The third part titled ‘War on the Japanese Eyes’ presents some fundamental differences between the American racism and Japanese racism. In chapter 8 which is the first one in the section, the main difference in the racism of the two enemies is explained. The Americans base racism on skin color while the Japanese base it on breeding ability. This meant that the Japanese were from a superior breed compared to the others and not the skin color that mattered (Dower 98).
Chapter nine illustrates how the Japanese conceptualized the Americans. According to them, they regarded Americans as a creature called obi which had both good and bad traits. This chapter crowns the hatred which has already increased to extreme levels. The other chapters and part elaborates on how the hatred would have fueled the Nagasaki and Honshu bombing in the year 1945 which was towards the end of the Second World War. According to the author, the hatred would have led to the fighting without necessarily the fight being for any beneficial purposes to any party (Dower, 128).
The USSR allied with the Americans who later came in full force but could not attack the Germans directly since they (Americans) were not the actual victims of the German assault. On learning that the Americans were fighting the Germans in the Second World War, Japan started to secretly back the Nazi Germans not for any benefit but for their racial hatred against the American. The Americans were attacked directly by the Japanese in the sea. They were trying to find a way of engaging each other in a war thus the German war on Poland offered the ground which they wanted. The Americans started attacking the sub humans (Japanese) directly in a show of their racial hatred. They believed that these primitive creatures had some superhuman powers thus wanted to use weapons of mass destruction to get rid of them (Dower, 117).
According to Keegan, the Second World War started with the German invasion into Poland. Poland was state in the USSR thus the Germans had engaged in war with USSR indirectly. The root cause of the German invasion of Poland was racial discrimination since they believed that the Jews who were occupying Poland were not worth anything. This was led by Adolf Hitler who launched the attack on Poland and on one day, he massacred two million Jews and used their remains as raw materials in a farms input factory (Keegan, 19). This shows that the Germans saw nothing better in the Jews apart from using them as raw materials in their fertilizer companies. The war got fierce and the USSR contacted the western bloc led by USA and Britain for support. The allies fought against the Germans but on learning of the US involvement in war, Japan got into the battle and supported Germans. The western bloc saw this as an opportunity to attack the Japanese leading to the bombing of Japan’s main islands (Taylor, 67).
In the book’ origins of second world war’ the author elaborates more on some issues which could have led to the war. In the book, the author says that the war could have been caused by German aggression against the racially discriminated Jews and deprival of their rightful position as a superpower. The aspect of German aggression seems to carry more weight on the root cause of the whole commotion and war. In this book, there are still traces of evidence connecting world war two and racial discrimination (Taylor, 12).Considering other possible hypothesis of the cause of world war two, power would be appropriate but from the idea of power, then the Americans would not have attacked the Japanese directly as they did instead, they would meet in the battle field and proof their power there (Taylor, 8).
In conclusion, the world war two seems to have been caused by the racial discrimination that existed in the world at the time. This is evidenced in all the books used in this paper giving an insight that the battle was not based on power. As evidence, if there was no racial discrimination between the Americans and the Japanese, would they get involved in the battle between Germany and USSR? Would the Japanese think of supporting the Germans fight the allied super powers? The other evidence is from Browning book. If there was no racial discrimination between the Germans and the Jews in Poland, would the Germans attack Poland raising the eyebrows of the other superpowers? In fact, the whole battle was based on racial discrimination and not the drive for power or dominance.
The main players affected by this vice were finding any grounds on which to attack each other with or without reason aiming at destroying one another. The Japanese attacked the American naval ships making the Americans to react by bombing the Nagasaki and Honshu islands which form the larger part of Japan. The use of a mass destruction weapons by the US on the Japanese civilians shows a great deal of animosity which is rooted in the deep hatred that the US harbored from the Japanese. If it was a war affair only, the US air force would have attacked the Japanese military not the civilians.
References
Taylor, A. The origins of Second World War. New Jersey. Princeton Inc.1961. Print.
Dower, J. War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New Jersey. Princeton Inc.1986. Print.
Keegan, J. Timeline of world war two. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 1994. Print.
Browning, J. Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion and the final solution for Poland. Penguin group publishers. 2005. Print.
