Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire

Rating:
Summary: Fills a gap in our memory of World War II
Review: Gerald Horne has produced a remarkable work of World War II scholarship in "Race War." This is not normative history, which, for the layperson, is "history premised on the assumption that national institutions work more or less as advertised," as Civil Rights historian Charles Payne puts it. "Race War," on the contrary, effectively challenges typical preconceived notions about what specifically nation-states fought for and how ideas of race played out in World War II.

I learned more about WWII from this book than any book I can remember--not because other books aren't any good or anything like that, but because Horne looks under a particular rock of the war that it would be more pleasant to leave untouched: the white supremacy that was an inescapable part of the Allied cause (not that soldiers meant for it to be, but nonetheless, it's there). In memory, the war has been gilded as a clash of democracy against fascism. But forgotten in this, Horne writes, is the embarrassing fact that the defenders of democracy, the U.S. and Great Britain, were running a Jim Crow army and a force of colonized dark-skinned peoples, respectively. This paradox created a gaping chasm so big that the Japanese army almost marched right on through it.

Horne uses hard facts to remind us of race ideas that don't show up in normative histories, even though the ideas were on everyone's mind during the war. For example, in memory, Horne notes that you think of Hitler and the Holocaust when someone asks about race in the war. When the war was on, however, the question of race revolved around the Pacific and white Americans were most agitated by race ideas regarding the Japanese. In fact, Horne shows how the Allies basically use the same ol' white supremacist propaganda that stereotyped African Americans in the Jim Crow South. They just changed the cast slightly, subbing Japanese faces for African American faces atop monkey-like bodies.

Horne never defends Japan (he even says he would have fought against it--even though he would have been forced to fight for democracy while discriminated in a Jim Crow army) and makes clear that he's "rooting" for the Allies. But he insists that it is not right that we ignore what really went down. This is an attitude I would hope the American public would embrace as whole-heartedly as it has Brokaw's celebration of the "Greatest Generation" and Ambrose's "borrowed battle hymns of the republic" (as respected historian Timothy B. Tyson described the work of the popular writer). The negative comments of the reviewer below suggest he did not read the book, as he misrepresents arguments critical to the book. And that's too bad, because he would have benefited from reading "Race War."

Horne's work seems timely to me: it reminds us that racial justice is not just a matter of conscience, it is a matter of national security (a phrase that has recently received renewed currency, though we now suddenly and inexplicably speak of the nation as a "homeland"). Horne reminds us that, for example, the white supremacist policies of demagogic southern conservatives--for all their patriotic posturing--were the equivalent of adding a legion of soldiers to the Axis armies. Just as Emmett Till's murder showed up on the front page of "Pravda" during the fight for hearts and minds, the United States' enemies used the nation's white supremacy against it during WWII. As the United States again wages war in Asia, with its occupation of Iraq--a war wrought with perilous racial implications--Horne's message seems all the more like a fire bell in the night.

Rating:
Summary: Fills a gap in our memory of World War II
Review: Gerald Horne has produced a remarkable work of World War II scholarship in "Race War." This is not normative history, which, for the layperson, is "history premised on the assumption that national institutions work more or less as advertised," as Civil Rights historian Charles Payne puts it. "Race War," on the contrary, effectively challenges typical preconceived notions about what specifically nation-states fought for and how ideas of race played out in World War II.

I learned more about WWII from this book than any book I can remember--not because other books aren't any good or anything like that, but because Horne looks under a particular rock of the war that it would be more pleasant to leave untouched: the white supremacy that was an inescapable part of the Allied cause (not that soldiers meant for it to be, but nonetheless, it's there). In memory, the war has been gilded as a clash of democracy against fascism. But forgotten in this, Horne writes, is the embarrassing fact that the defenders of democracy, the U.S. and Great Britain, were running a Jim Crow army and a force of colonized dark-skinned peoples, respectively. This paradox created a gaping chasm so big that the Japanese army almost marched right on through it.

Horne uses hard facts to remind us of race ideas that don't show up in normative histories, even though the ideas were on everyone's mind during the war. For example, in memory, Horne notes that you think of Hitler and the Holocaust when someone asks about race in the war. When the war was on, however, the question of race revolved around the Pacific and white Americans were most agitated by race ideas regarding the Japanese. In fact, Horne shows how the Allies basically use the same ol' white supremacist propaganda that stereotyped African Americans in the Jim Crow South. They just changed the cast slightly, subbing Japanese faces for African American faces atop monkey-like bodies.

Horne never defends Japan (he even says he would have fought against it--even though he would have been forced to fight for democracy while discriminated in a Jim Crow army) and makes clear that he's "rooting" for the Allies. But he insists that it is not right that we ignore what really went down. This is an attitude I would hope the American public would embrace as whole-heartedly as it has Brokaw's celebration of the "Greatest Generation" and Ambrose's "borrowed battle hymns of the republic" (as respected historian Timothy B. Tyson described the work of the popular writer). The negative comments of the reviewer below suggest he did not read the book, as he misrepresents arguments critical to the book. And that's too bad, because he would have benefited from reading "Race War."

Horne's work seems timely to me: it reminds us that racial justice is not just a matter of conscience, it is a matter of national security (a phrase that has recently received renewed currency, though we now suddenly and inexplicably speak of the nation as a "homeland"). Horne reminds us that, for example, the white supremacist policies of demagogic southern conservatives--for all their patriotic posturing--were the equivalent of adding a legion of soldiers to the Axis armies. Just as Emmett Till's murder showed up on the front page of "Pravda" during the fight for hearts and minds, the United States' enemies used the nation's white supremacy against it during WWII. As the United States again wages war in Asia, with its occupation of Iraq--a war wrought with perilous racial implications--Horne's message seems all the more like a fire bell in the night.

Rating:
Summary: Thanks to Japan: Asia is free.
Review: Gerald Horne makes point-by-point case to demonstrate how Japan psychologically represented non-whites in the Second World War against the whites and hence the war was nothing but a Race War - the name of the book. Horne has done a splendid job in interpreting events of history and rightly pointed out that U.S. propaganda essentially saw Second World War as a fight to resist a defeat in the hands of Asiatic people (for learning more on this issue, I will recommend John Dower's War without mercy: race & power in the Pacific war). Horne's thesis is not over-simplification of the history of the Second World War rather he fixed it. He has in fact straightened up all the tortuous arguments and cases made by the Western historians and exposed their hypocrisy of highlighting moral and heroic roles played by the U.S. to deter Japanese aggression.

There are several new things to learn from the book. First, why the Africans then living in U.S. mentally aligned themselves with Japanese and how FBI and U.S. propaganda machinery was trying to deal with this issue. It was good to know that Jessie Owens was shown a great deal of respect by the Nazis, contrary to the popularly held notion by the Americans that he was disrespected and ignored. Also, his demonstration of the fact that most of the Chinese residing in Singapore and Hong Kong colluded and sides with the advancing Japanese army simply because they just hated British oppression and inhuman subjugation is again something many Chinese need to know. Japanese strategy was to attack European and American imperialism by invading colonial bases in Asia-Pacific and drive them out which the colonized people viewed as liberation. I think, Horne has successfully got his message through that Japanese had not just wanted to liberate the Asian people from white oppression but also give the Asians a psychological and moral booster that whites are not invincible. In this process Japan had also liberated the whites from a superstitious mindset of white supremacy, which the westerners should thankfully accept.

Rating:
Summary: Not a historically accurate argument
Review: The basic treatise here is that because the White colonialists were racist against Asians the Japanese were able to make allies out of those same suppressed people against the United States and England. Unfortunately this is patently untrue. The Japanese themselves were the ones obsessed with Race as they invaded half of Asia to create a 'co-prosperity sphere'. Of course the only people meant to prosper were the Japanese. Far from 'turning racism on its head' the Japanese were far more imperious to the people they conquered then the U.S and English had ever been. In fact millions of Koreans, Indians, Thais, and Philippines were enslaved, raped and murdered during the war, not by the Americans(who they viewed as liberators) but by the Japanese occupation forces. In China, especially at Nanking, the Japanese entered into a war of extermination against the Chinese. Why? Well the patently racial doctrines convinced the soldiers that the enemy was 'inferior' and this key point is missed in the text.

This books argument must be taken to task for it ignores the facts. The reading here doesn't fully explain the true affects that 'racism' had on the Japanese mind set prior to the war. The Japanese didn't set out to 'payback' the Europeans, rather they took the racial doctrines to heart and simply adopted them. In the end it was the Japanese offensive that used race as a motivator rather then the U.S and England. How else can one explain why all the nations of Asia viewed the Americans as liberators?

Seth J. Frantzman