War Without Mercy Race and Power in the Pacific War
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War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War is a book explaining the in depth details of the role of racism played in the Japanese/American segment of World War II. The book is divided into two parts; one through the American perspective and the other through the Japanese point of view. The book's main objective is to present racism as a major contributor to war and its power of influence on man and his war mentality. The book outlines the timeline of racism and how it coincides with the war in the Pacific, showing that as the war progresses, racism starts to play a larger role. Racism is conveyed as the major excuse as to why the cruelty of violence increased and was accepted as the war aged. Thus, hatred behind the racism was reasoned to be the causation for soldiers to commit these malicious acts without feelings of remorse or guilt.
The American Perspective
The Japanese were underestimated from before the beginning of the war. They were dubbed "yellow monkeys" and "yellow bastards" by the New Yorker magazine even before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were known in America for one major thing the ability to carry through mass atrocities. For example, only 4% of the British and American prisoners of war died while in the hands of the Germans and Italians, yet 27% of the POW's captured by Japanese did not survive...