Examining the Pacific War in the Context of
Japanese and American Culture
Brian Brew (Herricks High School)
My grandfather enlisted not long after his eighteenth birthday. As it was 1944, he reckoned he had a
choice: join the Navy and serve America in relative safety, or risk being drafted as a soldier or a marine.

Upon finishing boot camp, he was assigned to the transport ship Riverside and served as a radar man for
the duration of the Pacific War. He carried a prejudice within him for the rest of his life after the conflict – a
prejudice against the Japanese people. His intolerance was neither blatant racism nor contempt. It was
rather a form of distrust, mixed with an omnipresent resentment. Any item with a “Made in Japan” tag was
only to be bought as a last resort. Owning a Japanese car? Unthinkable. Whereas my generation knows
Japan for its history and vibrant culture, his found it difficult to look past Pearl Harbor and the kamikazes.

American culture in the war years hardly helped improve people’s perceptions of Japan. Emperor
Hirohito, who is remembered today as a soft-spoken, good-hearted man, was portrayed as a buck-toothed
monkey. And sadly, men of my grandfather’s ilk, who merely refrained from buying Japanese and cast the
occasional suspicious glance, were the minority. Japanese Americans, even those born stateside and their
families, were the victims of bitter racism during and after the war. Internment camps and signs reading
“Japs Keep Moving” were the norm of the time. During the Second World War, Americans – civilian and
soldier alike – hardly understood that the determination of Japanese soldiers stemmed from centuries of
culture and tradition.

American GIs saw the banzai charges and suicidal fervor of their foes as a disturbing brand of
fanaticism. They had next to no knowledge whatsoever about the principles of Japanese society that
motivated their actions. First and foremost, of course, are the codes that stemmed from centuries of samurai
traditions. Bushido, the well-known Japanese equivalent of western chivalry, is prominent among these
codes. Bushido places emphasis upon justice, honor, and loyalty. In addition to Bushido, the ancient
Japanese religion of Shintoism played a role in motivating the empire’s soldiers in the war. Among the
principal beliefs of the faith is that the emperor is a divine figure to be obeyed without hesitation.

Shintoism, which served the Japanese military establishment in the early years of the war, served to help
the allies in the end: after the attacks on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to say nothing of the threat
posed to Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito refused to allow his people to suffer further from the horrors of war. A
coup against him failed, and a recorded message from the emperor was delivered to Japan’s people and its
troops via radio for the first time in history. It was in part through Shintoism, which stirred countless
Japanese soldiers to fight hopeless battles for their emperor and their country, that the warriors laid down
their arms and peace talks with the United States began. The military regime perverted the practices of
Japanese culture, such as loyalty to the emperor and ritual suicide for the sake of honor, to suit their own
purposes, just as terrorists in today’s world distort peaceful teachings to justify their own atrocious agendas.

My grandfather spent time in Japan after the war’s end, in the early months of the occupation. But he
didn’t just spend time there. He was, according to the tale, among the first Americans to lay eyes upon the
smoldering ruin of Hiroshima in the summer of 1945. He felt no joy, nor pride, nor patriotism at the event.

He was simply horrified. And that, I think, helped keep his bias against the Japanese people from
ballooning into hatred, and kept him from instilling that bias in his children. A surgeon in his later years, he
developed a motto that he instilled in his three daughters and three sons, the youngest of whom is my
father: when you cut into someone, we’re all the same. American and Japanese leaders seem to have
grasped this fundamental fact. In the long decades since the war, the old foes have become good friends. It
gives one a definite feeling of hope.

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