War Without Mercy
John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon, 1987.
John W. Dower is a professor of Japanese history who received his Ph.D. In History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University in 1972 and has written extensively about popular culture in his scholarly work on Japanese and U.S. foreign relations history, including books such as Empire and Aftermath, Japan in War and Peace, and Embracing Defeat.
John Dower uses a wide variety of sources from the U.S., Britain and Japan to prove his thesis that the Pacific War was a merciless racial struggle that had far more in common with Hitler's war on the Eastern Front than the war between Germany and the Western Allies. Among these are diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers, magazines, films, scholarly books and articles, radio broadcasts, official military and government documents,...
Essay Topic Examples 1. The Role of Propaganda in Shaping Perceptions of the Enemy: This essay would explore how propaganda was used by both the United States and Japan to dehumanize the enemy and rally public support for the war effort. The discussion would include an examination of various propaganda tools, such as posters, films, and cartoons, and an analysis of how these mediums contributed to the racial hatred and
Essay Topic Examples 1. Analyzing the Underpinnings of Racial Hatred in the Pacific War: A Review of 'War Without Mercy' This essay would explore the theme of race as a fundamental element in the Pacific War, discussed in Dower's 'War Without Mercy'. The essay would analyze Dower's argument about how racial differences were exaggerated and manipulated by both the American and Japanese governments to fuel a war fought with uncommon savagery and
War "Studs Terkel's: The Good War In The Good War Terkel presents the compelling, the bad, and the ugly memories of World War II from a view of forty years of after the events. No matter how horrendous the recollections are, comparatively only a few of the interviewees said that if the adventure never happened that they would be better off. It was a lively and determinative involvement in their lives.
World War II Japan's wars of aggression and conquest began long before the fascist takeover of the 1930s and the alliance with Nazi Germany in 1940, and the idea that the Japanese were a superior race also had a long pedigree -- as indeed did the Nordic-Aryan racism of the Nazis. Both used the tactics of blitzkrieg and surprise to end up in control of most of Europe and Asia by
However, Dower goes beyond just tracing the foundation of racism between the United States and Japan during the Pacific War and also examines how this racial hatred was easily overcome during the post-war years. Dower points out that after the war, an amicable postwar relationship was created between the United States and Japan, one in which has continued to the present day. According to Dower, the same stereotypes that fed
Atomic Bomb Historians like Gar Alperovitz and Martin Sherwin have known for many years, based on declassified U.S. government documents that Japan was going to surrender in 1945 even if the atomic bombs were no dropped and that no invasion would ever have been necessary. Their only condition was that the United States "guaranteed the safety of the Emperor Hirohito," and in the end the Truman administration agreed to this rather
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