Salmon Sheets

The highly popular BoingBoing blog points to this WWII military training comic book called "How to Spot a Jap". It was created for US soldiers going into China so they could tell the difference between Japanese (who were likely working for the Japanese military) and the Chinese natives. BoingBoing also links to this site, www.ddaymuseum.org, here. They have this "How to Spot a Jap" on a large wall exhibit.

The Clash of Cultures
Artifacts, posters, videos and interactive touch screens help audiences learn about racial stereotyping, demonization, and warfare in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

I say "Baka!"

When I read through the comic book, I don't see anything unusually offensive. Really.

"Ryan, you and Terry have been out in China for a long time... How about showing the men a few points of difference between the Japs and our Oriental allies!"

"Yes, sir!"

The comic book then goes on to describe what I would consider to be objective differences between Chinese and Japanese people for those whose lives depend on being able to distinguish between the two: height, body build, skin color, facial texture, teeth setting, the most probable emotional state when questioned (Japanese spies would be fearful), walking gait, a wide space between Japanese toes due to walking in geta shoes, differences in pronouncing certain English sounds, and the fact that they're likely to accept death if they can kill some of their enemy at the same time which is something I'd want to know if I was going to be encountering them. The comic book also mentions Japanese modesty and the methods typically used to conceal weapons.

What else are you going to do? If you refuse to distinguish the identifiable differences between Chinese and Japanese, many of our soldiers would die because of it. If that's racist, then being racist loses its meaning and all the real acts of true racial prejudice become diluted by the false accusations. Don't cry racial wolf.

The Japanese had invaded and occupied much of China at that time and they were all over China (and what they did in China makes "Abu Graib atrocities" look like a picnic). And if you think this is an offensive portrayal of the Japanese or Chinese, you should see what the Chinese thought of the Japanese at that time, or even today! And of course the Japanese have always been notoriously racially prejudiced.

Keep in mind that most of the people who would read these comic books would be uneducated and have almost no exposure to anything outside of the US. There was no television in their lives. They weren't going to deal well with subtleties.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people at that time had no problem whatsoever in demonizing the enemy. It was considered an important part of the war effort as it has been in pretty much every culture in all history for those doing the fighting. We ask our military to both kill and die in representing our country. Killing other people without hesitation when necessary does not come naturally for people raised in a peaceful place. It requires very specific training which includes demonizing, or at least partly dehumanizing, the enemy. And it places a significant burden on those who are trained to do it. In exchange for asking our military to do our dirty work (or even just to prepare to do our dirty work), we allow them to run their organization as they need to.

It seems to me that the most offensive part of this comic book is the way in which Chinese and Japanese are drawn vs how the Americans are drawn, and also use of the term "Jap", which should not be the least startling when looking at things from that time period.

I'm not going to apologize for what my country did in the distant past and I don't expect Japanese of today to apologize for what their country did. We made our peace long ago and we've stood by it for many decades. And thanks to Japan, today we're not forced to drive crappy, unreliable cars and watch crappy, badly animated cartoons. I say "Arigato Gozaimasu!" And we can celebrate our common Engrish heritage. Wakarimasu ka?

UPDATE: Here's a vile example of moral equivalence gone totally haywire. They claim that an American G.I. getting crushed by a large missle is "a nice counterpoint" to the booklet mentioned above. Ok, let's think about this for a minute. The booklet talks about how to detect enemy combatants who are hiding amongst the civilian population. Given that they were known to be deadly shows that they were engaged in combat or prepared to engage in combat, which would be a violation of Article 44 of the Geneva Convention (ok, so that article didn't exist at the time, but it shows that this was a problem area acknowledged in hindsight as something to be prevented).

In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack.

Ironically, these people are called "GOOD Magazine".



I grew up believing that the 1950s atomic bomb civil defense movie "Duck and Cover" (video here) was ridiculous. That was the progressive view at the time. It wasn't until I saw various documentaries about Hiroshima/Nagasaki that I found out that it was actually quite an excellent way to prepare people for a nuclear bomb. The point is that within a certain distance of a bomb, you're pretty much dead (or you'll wish you were dead). But a much larger number of people are in the region where their actions will determine what happens to them. For them, ducking and covering can mean the difference between temporary injury and burns vs massive injury, disfigurement, or death.

So is it wrong to train everyone in how to minimize their injury because some unknown set of them will not have a chance? No!

In addition to this, giving people training in what to do in the case of a nuclear attack gives them a better sense of empowerment that will help them psychologically with the constant threat of a bomb.

In my opinion, we were irresponsible to downplay civil defense after the 1960s.