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.

102



Nana Korobi, Ya Oki
Seung Hye Yang (Queens High School for the Sciences at York College)
“Nana korobi, ya oki” means “Fall down seven times, get up eight” in Japanese. It took me a long
while before I fully understood what that meant. Growing up as the firstborn daughter of a very traditional
East Asian family was a heavy burden to carry, because anything less than perfect was absolutely
unacceptable. I was raised to believe that my self-worth was defined by the straight A’s I was expected to
bring home, by the pride I brought to my parents. I was raised to be exemplary. And for a while, I thought I
was. That all changed in 8 th grade. I was at the highest point of my life, or so I thought. I had the best
grades in my class, and I would always show up on the top honor rolls in school. I was the daughter all the
other Asian parents wanted their children to be. My parents bragged to their peers about my every
accomplishment. Teachers would constantly remind me that I was set up for a bright future. I thought this
was it. I thought I was happy. But deep down inside, I knew I wasn’t. There was always the nagging feeling
that something was missing- and the realization came all at once. I was completely empty inside. I had
nothing but the so-called “honor” I valued so much. Who was I? If you took away my grades and my
manners, I had absolutely nothing.

This realization hit me like a brick, and around the same time, my grades began to fall drastically.

For me, a girl who knew how to do nothing but study, it was a difficult time. I lost the respect of my
parents, who felt the need to remind me every day how disappointed they were in me. I was disappointed in
me. It was all too much at once, and it was terrifying how I couldn’t get back up again. I’d never
experienced failure before in my life, and now I was one.

What saved me was my 8 th grade exit project. We were told to depict a certain part of World War II,
in any kind of media. I chose to make a comic book about the bombing of Hiroshima. I loved history, but I
always unconsciously drifted away from the whole picture, opting only to focus on the winners’ point of
view. However, for the first time in my life, I chose to focus on the history of the losing side, to see just
how things went down for them.

I was absolutely horrified. I went in knowing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only two places in
history to be attacked with the atomic bomb, but I never knew the terrifying effects of the nuclear energy
that came with it. Studying the bombing of Hiroshima opened my eyes to a new world. I was forced to look
at images I would have otherwise never stomached, to read the graphic accounts of firsthand witnesses, to
feel the despair that surely rose over the city as it smoldered and burned. I read about how the innocent
civilians in direct contact with the bomb’s initial radius either died immediately, or died shortly from
throwing their burning bodies into contaminated water. I read about how the people near the bomb were
blinded by the light, and how people in the future were afflicted by the after-effects of the radiation that
followed. I was utterly in shock, and found myself wondering just how this city looked like today.

Naturally, it came as a complete shock when I saw that today, Hiroshima is a beautiful, modern city
with skyscrapers and highways. I learned that after the bombing, the people of Japan and the world worked
together to rebuild the destroyed city. In that moment, I knew the most important thing I learned from the
project was that you could always bounce back. Failure is inevitable, but it is merely a setback. It’s okay to
stumble and fall, you’re human. Hiroshima went from a thriving city to nothing, to a thriving city once
more. The people never gave up on Hiroshima, and it returned to its former glory in a matter of decades. I
saw Hiroshima in me.

Nana korobi, ya oki. I can feel myself falling again. I’ve fallen countless times since then. It may be
the seventh time, or the hundredth time, I’ve lost count. But it doesn’t really matter. I’ve learned to get back
up. Bibliography
“Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” History.com History.com. Staff. 2009. Web.

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki 103