Offensive Racist Propaganda Movie Against Japanese

2008-10-30 4

This intensely racist World War II propaganda film aims at showing the public how different and inhuman the Japanese are from Americans. Setting Japanese people up as the hated “other” was easy for Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan, who narrates the film. “I can testify that they are as different from ourselves as any people on this planet. The real difference is in their minds. You cannot measure Japanese sense of logic by any Western yardstick. Their weapons are modern; their thinking 2000 years out of date." He describes them as a people who are brought up from infancy in a warlike culture that trains them to believe that it is their God-given right to rule the world, and they will fanatically fight to the death in order to achieve it. As he gives this running racist commentary, inflammatory and often misleading scenes of Japanese life roll by. Children are shown doing calisthenics, soldiers are shown marching, Emperor Hirohito sits his horse, people perform Shinto worship, and Japanese soldiers commit grisly war atrocities. This film is American war propaganda at its worst and most prejudiced.