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Myth and the Greatest Generation
A Social History of Americans in World War II
Kenneth Rose
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Myth and the Greatest Generation
A Social History of Americans in World War II
Kenneth Rose
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Myth and the Greatest Generation calls into question the glowing paradigm of the World War II generation set up by such books as The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw.
Including analysis of news reports, memoirs, novels, films and other cultural artefacts Ken Rose shows the war was much more disruptive to the lives of Americans in the military and on the home front during World War II than is generally acknowledged. Issues of racial, labor unrest, juvenile delinquency, and marital infidelity were rampant, and the black market flourished.
This book delves into both personal and national issues, calling into questions the dominant view of World War II as 'The Good War'.
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Part I
Americans Abroad
1
Fairness, Savagery, Delight, Trauma, and Vice
I. The Fair and the Savage
Americans fought two distinct wars between 1941 and 1945, wars separated not only by geography but also by the most basic assumptions of moral behavior. In terms of battlefield conduct, the war that Americans fought in Europe was not markedly different from the Napoleonic wars. But the war in the Pacific was revolutionary, a plunge into brutality and race hatred with seemingly no bottom. More than any other single factor, the differences between these two wars were rooted in the ways the enemies regarded each other.
In his memoir, Paul Fussell notes that âwe always called the Germans âKrauts,â doubtless to bolster our sense that we were killing creatures very odd and sinister and thus appropriate targets of contempt.â1 âHun,â an appellation borrowed from World War I, was another derogatory word applied to Germans, and also in wide use was the almost affectionate-sounding âJerry.â Robert Rasmus, who fought in Europe, remembered that he initially hated Germans both collectively and individually, but as increasing numbers of German dead came under his view, Rasmus had a revelation in which âeach took on a personality. These were no longer an abstraction. These were no longer the Germans of the brutish faces and the helmets we saw in the newsreels. They were exactly our age. These were boys like us.â2 A soldier in Italy told Martha Gellhorn that he felt a similar kinship with German soldiers, âWeâre not mad at anybody. Jerryâs in there just because heâs ordered, same as we are.â3 This was so common an attitude that the army worried that âidentification with the enemyâ was becoming a âliability.â4
Because of this feeling of commonality among Germans and Americans, there was widespread agreement that combat between them, with some exceptions (such as the operations of German SS units), was âfair.â German tank commander Hans von Luck described the fighting in North Africa as âmerciless, but always fair.â5 German and American medics and doctors not only gave medical relief to each otherâs troops but also sometimes performed operations side by side.6 Lieutenant Sidney Hoffman, a frontline doctor in Africa, noted that the Germans âran their own ambulances right into no manâs land ⊠we tried not to hit them.â Twelve American ambulances were destroyed by the Germans, but Hoffman was quick to add, âI think it was accidental. ⊠They seemed to respect the Red Cross as we do.â7
Corporal John F. OâNeill, who was repatriated after a stay in German hospitals and prison camps, insisted that âGerman front-line soldiers are always gentlemen. The experiences of all our wounded have proven that.â8 In addition, both sides honored the surrender of enemy troops, and once former enemies became noncombatants, it was often the case that relations between them not only relaxed but even became remarkably cordial. J. Glenn Gray recalled one incident when Americans fighting in Italy took prisoner a group of Germans:
We stared at one another with a confused mixture of hostility and fear, all alike victims of ignorance. Suddenly I heard some of the prisoners humming a tune under their breath. Four who were a trained quartet and had contrived to be captured together started to sing. Within a few minutes, the transformation in the atmosphere of that stable was complete, and amusing, too, in retrospect. The rifles were put down, some of them within easy reach of the captives. Everybody clustered closer and began to hum the melodies. Cigarettes were offered to the prisoners, snapshots of loved ones were displayed, and fraternization proceeded at a rapid rate. When the commanding officer, just as new to combat as his men, arrived on the scene, he was speechless with fury and amazement.9
Undeniably, the doctrine of âfairnessâ between German and American troops was constantly being stretched and challenged. In Italy, Eric Sevareid came across the body of a German soldier and asked two American soldiers standing nearby what had happened. âSon of a bitch kept lagging behind the others when we brought them in. We got tired of hurrying him up all the time.â Sevareid found he was not shocked by this âdeliberate murder,â âmerely a little surprised.â10 But despite innumerable violations, âfairnessâ at least existed as an ideal between Americans and Germans. Elsewhere, warfare was conducted on a radically different premise. Germans and Russians fought each other on the Eastern Front with a savagery that was virtually unrestrained.11 In the Pacific, Americans and Japanese waged a war of primal hatred.12
The way the American public viewed the Japanese was consistently more negative than its view of Germans, which helps explain why there were no German ârelocationâ camps in the United States. Robert Redfield noted:
We distinguish Nazis from Germans. Not all Italians are followers of Mussolini. We know these things and recognize them. But the Japanese are all âJaps.â The Japanese, in the thinking of most of our people, are all one thing: a people fanatically devoted to the destruction of the United Statesâour enemies, all of them.13
More than anything else, it was a perceived difference of mind that American writers focused on in articles on the Japanese psyche. In Atlantic Monthly, for instance, Helen Mears described the Japanese as ârepressedâ both socially and intellectually, and explained that âthe ruthlessness of his attacks is the energy of years of pent-up repressions.â14 A Life magazine article claimed that Japanese behavior during the warââa cold-blooded ruthlessnessâ and a âstubborn fanaticism in the face of deathââwas not a wartime anomaly but was deeply rooted in Japanese culture. As evidence, Life analyzed The 47 Ronin (âthe most popular play in Japanâ) and found a blood-soaked drama in which âthe Japanese audience demands extreme realism in scenes of cruelty.â15
American depictions of the Japanese were uglier, more intense, and more personal than their portrayals of the Germans, and the Japanese were much more likely to be reduced to subhuman caricatures than the Germans.16 When Americans were asked in 1945, âWhich people do you think are more cruel at heartâthe Germans or the Japanese?â 82 percent responded that it was the Japanese. Gallup pollsters commented that âattitudes toward the German and Japanese people do not vary to any important extent by education levels in this countryâ and that all strata of society believed that âthe Japanese people show instincts considerably less civilized than the German people.â17 The difference in the way Americans viewed their two enemies is made clear in the popular song âThereâll Be No Adolph Hitler nor Yellow Japs to Fear.â18
Racism is frequently offered up as the explanation for this difference, and undeniably there was a racial component to the fighting in the Pacific that was not found in Europe. In America, the ingrained Jim Crow system, the internment of resident Japanese, and the segregation and ill-treatment of black U.S. troops were all clear indications of the blithe assumptions of white racial superiority that prevailed in American society. When the fighting started, these assumptions were applied to the Japanese, whom in the popular imagery of the war were portrayed as rats, monkeys, cockroaches, snakes, dogs and bats.19 Senator Alben W. Barkley called the Japanese âbrutes and beasts in the form of man.â20 One indication of the epithets that Americans were directing against the Japanese is found in the list released by the Office of War Information to radio broadcasters of words that were ârecommendedâ and ânot recommendedâ to describe the Japanese:
Not Recommended | Recommended |
slimy Fiendish Bestial Grinning Toothy Monkey-man Jap-rat Yellow Inhuman Slant-eyes | Brutal Treacherous Cruel Tough Wanton Desperate Scheming Fanatical Venomous Ruthless21 |
Fig. 1.1 Collierâs cover by Arthur Szyk, 12 December 1942. (Reproduced with the cooperation of Alexandra Szyk Bracie and the Arthur Szyk Society.)
Even more xenophobic and racist than Americans were the Japanese. The Japanese took for granted their own racial superiority, and despite Japanâs promotion of a pan-Asianism and a âCo-Prosperity Sphere,â it soon became clear that these were concepts based not on cooperation among equals but on formulas for Japanâs subjugation of client nations. Japanese propaganda emphasized the purity and superiority of the Japanese race, which meant that the other degraded races of the world were fit only to obey and follow the Japanese. Nakajima Chikuhei, a Japanese industrialist and political leader, claimed that âit is the sacred duty of the leading race to lead and enlighten the inferior onesâ and that Japan was âthe sole superior race in the world.â22 This attitude would have grim repercussions for non-Japanese. Tamura Yoshio, a Japanese medical technician who infected human subjects with bacteriological agents (including bubonic plague, typhoid and syphilis) at Unit 731 in China, was asked in an interview if he had ever felt pity for his victims. He replied, âI had gotten to the point where I lacked pity. After all, we were already implanted with a narrow racism, in the form of a belief in the superiority of the so-called âYamato Race.â We disparaged all other races.â23
All of Asia would bear the brunt of this Japanese-style enlightenment, and as John W. Dower has noted, Japanâs âoppressive behavior toward other Asians earned the Japanese more hatred than support.â24 Certainly, the Chinese needed no reminders of the barbarity of the Japanese. China had already suffered one of the largest massacres in human history when Japanese soldiers put to death some 260,000 Chinese civilians in the Rape of Nanking.25 Rather than an incident in which the military got temporarily out of control, the Rape of Nanking lasted for seven weeks, with the Japanese exhibiting a wanton cruelty that exceeded even Nazi atrocities. Japanese soldiers held killing contests to see who was fastest at beheading prisoners, buried people alive (some were only partially buried, then run over by horses or tanks), nailed prisoners to trees and telephone poles and used them for bayonet practice, sprayed Chinese with gasoline and burned them alive, and were responsible for other Nanking residents being torn to pieces by dogs. In addition, this was one of the largest-scale rapes in human history, with some 20,000 to 80,000 victims. The Japanese went into a raping frenzy, violating women of all ages, from the youngest girl to the oldest woman. Often this was done in front of the womenâs families, to make the rapes more satisfying to the Japanese.26 The peoples of other Asian nations under the yoke of the Japanese would soon have their own horror stories.
Some idea of the casual Japanese brutality toward native populations can be gleaned from a diary that was taken from the body of a dead Japanese artillery lieutenant in Burma. The lieutenant noted that natives were reluctant at first to become coolie laborers for the Japanese until âa first-class soldier, Hamauchi, a fellow graduate of mine at Arioki, took some to the edge of a ricefield, and the remainder saw that it was necessary to do as they were told.â Elsewhere, âthe natives left behind did not show themselves but we had some fun pulling out some of the native girls.â27 Life editorialized in January 1942 that âthe Japanese Army has spread across Asia a tale of horror that will be told for a thousand years,â and four months later the same magazine claimed that âthe Japanese soldier is uncontrollable, shows no mercy and takes no prisoners. He is a fanatical, frenzied murderer.â28
Not surprisingly, the American hatred of the Japanese was mirrored by a Japanese contempt for their American enemies, who were portrayed as demons, devils, or beasts with tails.29 John Dower notes that in one Japanese drawing, Roosevelt and Churchill were rendered as âdebauched ogres carousing with fellow demons in sight of Mount Fuji.â30 Even on the Eastern Front, the racial hatred was not as intense as it was in the Pacific.
The style of fighting practiced by the Japanese reflected both official military policy and societal norms. The 1908 Japanese army criminal code declared that âa commander who allows his unit to surrender to the enemy without fighting to the last man or who concedes a strategic area to the enemy shall be punishable by death.â The 1941 Japanese Field Service Code was even more blunt: âDo not be taken prisoner alive.â31 Japanese soldiers were trained to fight to the death for the glory of the emperor. To do so brought honor to the soldier and his family; to surrender brought shame to the soldier and humiliation to his family. One Japanese soldier explained that a Japanese who surrenders âcommits dishonor. One must forget him completely. His wife and his poor mother and children erase him from their memories. There is no memorial placed for him. It is not that he is dead. It is that he never existed.â32 Not surprisingly, this attitude, coupled with intense racial hostility, made the fighting in the Pacific much less âconventionalâ than the war in Europe, and more frightening to most Americans. This unconventionality was reflected in very low Japanese surrender rates, with military units fighting to the death or committing suicide rather than suffering the disgrace of surrender. Said the U.S. general W. E. Lynd, âJaps do not leave any place they hold. They donât go away. You just kill them.â33 Only a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was already speculation that suicide might be a national characteristic, that Japan was âcommitting national hara-kiri by throwing itself at the throat of its mightiest enemy.â34
From the beginning, American soldiers were astonished at the willingness of Japanese to sacrifice themselves by the hundreds in banzai suicide attacks that made no sense militarily. Fighting on the Bataan Peninsula in December 1941, Clayton Dahl of the 31st Infantry Regiment described Japanese attacks in his diary:
Theyâd come in waves, with their rifles high above their heads, screaming. God! What mass murder. Theyâd jump and stumble over the...