The Race War

The book’s title is War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War. It was written by John W. Dower and was published in 1986.

Dower outlines his thesis early in the book when he writes, “To scores of millions of participants, the war was also a race war. It exposed raw prejudices and was fueled by racial pride, arrogance, and rage on many sides. Ultimately, it brought about a revolution in racial consciousness throughout the world that continues to the present day.” (Dower 4) Dower’s main point of writing this book is to show that indeed issues dealing with a race war both made the war more merciless and more gruesome for all parties involved in the Pacific War.

Dower does a rather strong job of outlining how he arrived at his thesis by pointing to examples of racist or prejudicial thoughts and actions throughout his book.

One such issue that Dower addresses in his book deals with the influence that the American media had upon instilling racist thoughts into the minds of mainstream America at the time. “Another manifestation of this most emotional level of anti-Japanese racism was the routine use of racial slang in the media and official memoranda as well as every day discourse,” writes Dower. (Dower 81) “Nip and especially Jap were routinely used in the press and major weeklies or monthlies such as Time, Life, Newsweek, and Reader’s Digest.” (Dower 81)

Dower also goes on to point out that not only was it in the written media that these negative stereotypes persisted, but also in the audio media such as radio. “Jap was also extremely popular in the music world, where the scramble to turn out a memorable war song did not end with the release of tunes such as ‘The Remember Pearl Harbor March’ and ‘Good-bye Mama, I’m off to Yokohama.’ ‘Mow the Japs Down!’ and ‘We’ve got to do a Job on the Japs, Baby’ are fair samples of the wartime songs.” (Dower 81)

While the media’s influence during the age of the Pacific War more than likely did not spark the war to occur in the first place, it did have an influential effect on the sentiments surrounding the times. The United States would not be willing to lose a war in which so much anti-enemy sentiment was prevalent mainly on the basis of racism. By fighting a war that was rife with racism, the United States could easily pitch to the American citizens that whatever was necessary to defeat the “them” was better than having “them” beat “us.”

Dower also points out how the notion of Japanese dehumanization probably also had a major effect upon the racial aspects of the Pacific War. “…the Japanese were unique in unattractive ways, almost totally lacking in diversity or individuality, culturally and socially primitive, infantile or childish as individuals and as a group, collectively abnormal in the psychological and psychiatric sense, and tormented at every level by an overwhelming inferiority complex.” (Dower 122)

The fact that Dower characterized the Japanese in this way is important to the main thesis that he suggested. “When such points of focus were carried over to an industrialized country like Japan, they reinforced the impression that the Japanese were dressed-up primitives- or “savages” in modern garb, as the war rhetoric had it- who still conformed to a tribal mode, however far they might have traveled in matters of literacy, technology, and bourgeois trappings.” (Dower 123) Dower’s characterization of the Japanese as “savages” simply promoted the idea that it was just to go to war. After all, the notion of savages running amuck in the world would mean that the hegemonic leader of the world would have to “civilize” those savages through force. Simply deeming the Japanese as being savages implies that they need to be civilized and if it was not going to be done through peaceful means, then of course force would be necessary to quell any savage notions. How could the American government not sell to the American people the need to stop savages before they were to spread their savage ideals around the globe? By playing the race card in the Pacific War, the government allowed for justification for fighting the Pacific War to take place.

Dower also emphasizes that race was not only an issue for the Americans, but race also played a role in the Pacific War for the Japanese. The Japanese formed their own racist ideas about the Western enemies whom they fought. They viewed their Western aggressors, “…As unclean and wrong hearted men, as beasts, and ultimately- in the most prevalent Japanese idiom of all- as demons.” (Dower 216)

Dower puts it best when he says, “…the Japanese dehumanized the Anglo-American enemy just as the enemy dehumanized them.” (Dower 216) The race card was simply not an American issue, as it might seem. Although the Americans were indeed guilty of using race to enhance the “necessity” to fight in the Pacific War, the Japanese also used similar thoughts to show that it was Japan’s right to fight back with the strongest of aggressions. A war in which both enemies could actually dehumanize each other could only lead to a war that would be filled with bloodshed and anti-enemy, ultimately racist, thoughts.

There are several counterarguments that very well could be proposed to Dower’s argument that the Pacific War was a race war. Because the United States was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, many within the government must have felt a need to automatically retaliate against the Japanese aggressors. Such a thesis would lead one to believe that the Pacific War was actually a retaliatory war. Or perhaps it could be considered that the Pacific War was a proactive war, in the sense that if the United States were to win a fast and easy Pacific War, the chances of a dictatorial menace such as Hitler coming to power would’ve been greatly weakened. The Pacific War might even be viewed as being an economic war. Having Japan pose a threat to new, Asian markets that the United States was interested in at the time could be seen as an economic stimuli as to why the Pacific War could be seen as being an economic war. Or perhaps the United States was interested in furthering the increase of domestic production of wartime goods, thereby serving as another reason as to why the Pacific War could be seen as an economic war. Even more radical, the Pacific War could be seen as being a war of ego, meaning that the leaders of the United States and Japan were both so egotistical (the United States thinking they could win two wars at once and Japan’s egotistical drive for hegemony) that it was actually for egotistical motives of leaders that the Pacific War took place.

Dower in his War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War, does a fine job pointing as to how the Pacific War could be viewed as being a war not mainly about any political principles, but more about race. He does a good job giving different reasons as to how race played into decision-making, popular thought, media, and many other aspects of the Pacific War era. Although at times the book becomes a bit redundant or repetitive with its amount or placement of information, Dower never does lose sight of what his focus is. While there could very well indeed be many different counterarguments to what Dower suggests, Dower holds the line and writes the book in a way that makes the reader truly believe that the Pacific War was a race war. Although his argument could’ve been substantiated a bit more had he have considered and examined those counterarguments more closely, the strength of his argument does not weaken much because he is so intent on pushing his thesis that the Pacific War was a race war. Dower sticks to his thesis, gives valid arguments and facts that support his thesis, and therefore, the argument he is making about this topic (that the Pacific War was a race war) is very persuasive and well thought out.