I don’t know what it was like living in the USA during World War II. I don’t recall many of the lessons from World History or AP US History in high school. Today, I ran across a comic strip titled How to Spot a Jap.
According to the site on which I found the strip, it was published by the US Army and Navy as part of The Pocket Guide to China. The guide was distributed to soldiers in China. The strip was inteded to help soldiers discern between Chinese and Japanese people. I’m not sure what I think of this.
On the one hand, many of the soldiers probably had little exposure to Asians and Pacific Islanders. The soldiers would therefore have difficulty telling the various Asian ethnicities apart, a skill that could be the difference between life and death. On the other hand, the comic strip is satirical in its portrayal of Chinese and Japanese people. The strip often makes note of how "normal" the Chinese appear, as opposed to the "abnormal" features of the Japanese. This bias was no doubt due to the US support of China (and our interests in China) during the war. Had it been the other way around, I’m sure it would have been the Chinese who were much more different from the Americans.
This comic was published during the Golden Age, but I can’t help but feel like it is really part of a dark age. Should the government produce such negative media? Where is the line between appropriate and obscene? Fair and unfair?
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