The Impact of the Second World War on Australian Attitudes to Japan - Essay Example

Running head: Assess the impact of the Second World War on Australian attitudes to Japan Student’s name Institution Course Professor Date Introduction The developed attitudes of Australians about Japan and its citizens ranged from historical, social, political and cultural perspectives. Those events and experiences of Second World War in the twentieth century did cement immense feelings to many Australians that Japan was the “other” to be most feared. The image of Japanese in the era of Second World War was portrayed negative in regard to sadistic, cruel and fanatical behaviour (Beaumont 7). The soldiers from Australia felt an animosity towards the Japanese counterparts but they did not have towards their European enemies. The Second World War had immense contribution to a sharpened awareness of racism within the United States and a more radicals and militants tactics on the parts of the victims of discrimination. The Australians expressed their hostility with greater enthusiasm to kill Japanese. For instance, an Italian or a German could be left to run away but never to Japanese. Japanese dead were not considered in the same context of Italian or German dead (Frei 2).The maltreatment of the Europeans and Asians prisoners by Japanese during the Second World War increased the hatred between Japan and its victims. The dire determination of the army to make its soldiers fight till they are killed, the refusal to surrender in any circumstances and to regard the life useless when wounded reinforced the Australians negative attitudes towards the Japanese (Hank, Australian Broadcasting Corporation 34). Japanese were deemed to be a threat to Australias than other European enemies. Japanese were thought of a single entity as oppose to the Germans who were thought as separated entities. Apes and Others were utilized in the in-depth study of the propaganda and ideas. At the Second World War’s end, Japanese were seen as subhuman or categorized on the same level or below animals (Thorne 155). Alternatively, there was use of hunting and extermination metaphors with a sole objective to dehumanize the Japanese people (Dower 63). Initially, both United States and the British underestimated the strength of Japanese describing them as having underdeveloped mind and not able to have reasonable and rational thoughts. However, with the success of the Japanese in the wars, they were attributed to have superhuman powers. The Japanese character was perceived by its enemies to be childish, primitive and mentally and emotionally insane. The stir up hatred between Australians and Japanese during Second World War was boasted with the campaign that emphasized that Australians fought in order to prevent the deaths of their families and relatives and the end of civilization (McQueen 68). The Japanese forces were described as cocksure hordes who sought to glut their savagery and lust in the blood of a conquered white nation. The sources of hatred that Australians had to Japan were attributed to the racial animosity and the fear of invasion. For instance, Australians who fought in WWII grew in an era when assertions of racial superiority were acceptable. Consequently, successes of Japanese heightened the racial hatred against them by the enemies. The Japanese had units of varying strength, ability, experience and differences in quality among its soldiers. One lieutenant of 2/3rd Battalion argued that Japanese soldiers were not in the same class as those they faced in the Owen Stanleys. In the New Guinea, several aspects of Japanese performance were criticized. They include; poor marksmanship and poor weapons, naivety in attack, tactical inflexibility, tendency to be incautious by chattering and laughing loudly near the front and also tendency towards needless self sacrifice (Towle 18). The military prowess of Japanese soldiers in the Australian eyes were not raised with the do or die courage of soldiers from Japan. The willingness of the Japanese soldiers to die appeared bizarre to many Australians, for example one Japanese prisoner wept with humiliation and frustration when he could not be shot by his Australian captors (Finch, Lynette 72). The bravery in action displayed by Japanese soldiers looked like madness or fanaticism as oppose to the traditional military heroism. Numerical inferiority and insufficient air support were among the reasons that made Australians to be defeated in the hands of Japanese. A propaganda poster that depicted the sinking of the hospital ship, Centur in 1943 fueled the hostility of Australians towards the Japanese. Ability to adapt to primitive conditions helped Australians to account for the success of Japanese during the early campaigns (Johnston 110). The peculiar scenarios in which Australian front line soldiers served allowed them to temper their racism (Gilmore 155). Realism was fundamental in those circumstances. For instance, the training staff of Australians did not want their soldiers to feel inferior to the Japanese. The hatred that Australians front line soldiers felt for the Japanese was heightened through experience and observation and not propaganda. Those who campaigned against Japanese considered them evil, underhanded, detestable and frightening in their methods (McQueen 70). Dower did made suggestion that allied soldiers had images of Japanese as inhuman, subhuman and superman but rather as not humans. Steven Sullivan noted that Japanese were considered to kill defenseless human beings. But the Australians believed that killing Jabs were justified because they were not like them in terms of behaviour and appearance (Dower 62). The Australian soldiers were passionate in their willingness to kill Japanese soldiers despite the variation in the martial prowess. Yarwood claimed that the sudden rise in anti-Japanese attitudes in Australia was attributed to the fear that came up by the threat of war between the United States and Japan (Towle 103). For instance, they felt racial tensions behind California school board crisis were threatening for an Australia that had recently introduced an Alien Restriction Act. The negative attitudes of Australia towards Japan heighten by the following factors; withdrawal of Britain’s naval forces from the Pacific, the Japanese invasion of Korea and the collapse of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Australians referred the image of Japanese as “super soldier” or “superman”. In addition, at the end of Second World War, the feeble condition of many Japanese encountered in campaigns intensified racial contempt for them. A common image was that of a creature less than a man. Gullett concluded from his experience that Japanese were indeed like clever animals with distinct human characteristics (Moore, Hately-Broad, International Committee for the History of the Second World War 185). Senior officers from the battalion encouraged his juniors to have this attitude towards the Japanese. In 1942, General Blamey told his troops that the Japanese were a “curious race” and “subhuman beast”. They described the race as across between the ape and the human being. The dominant characteristics of prisoner of war (POW) life included utter powerlessness, frustration and constant anxiety. Insufficient medical supplies and food resulted in vitamin-deficiency diseases such as beriberi to become common within the Changi camp. Approximately 13,000 prisoners of war from Australia worked on the Burma-Thailand railway since it was termed as a common and dominant experience to every prisoner (McCormack, Hank Nelson 34). A veil of silence, better known as black curtain had descended on them. Nonetheless, many of the prisoners were granted to send a twenty-five-word message to their respective families and relatives but they had to write basing on the formula dictated by the Japanese (Towle 149). Australia participated in the war due to its emotional and political commitment to the British Commonwealth. The Australian government was concerned with security position of its citizens and also feared that Japan could capitalize on the preoccupation of both France and Britain in Europe in order to expand its influence in Asia. Most Australians paid a bitterly higher price due to their participation in the Pacific war (McQueen 176). At Malaya and Singapore regions, they were held in unspeakable conditions by the Japanese captors. As the war ends, they all carried permanent marks for the rest of their lives as a reminder of the captivity. Japanese attitudes were the chief reason of the Japanese brutal treatment of enemy soldiers who were unfortunate to fall in their hands. The inhumane acts of Japanese included a six week drunken orgy of mass killing, torture, rape and beheading. For the Allied armed forces, the war against Japan was the bitter and pitiless combat of WWII (Kato 150). The Japanese government reinforced the ban on surrender by insisting that any returning Japanese prisoner of war would be put to death. This generally impacted negatively the attitudes of Japanese towards their captured prisoners. The Japanese atrocities such as mutilation, torture and murder left the submarines with undying hatred towards their perpetrators. In order to complicate the establishment of solidarity in prison, Japanese POW hide their true identity from their captors. The Japanese assembled the resources, labour and food in a ruthless and demanding manner in both their old and new colonies. At Milne Bay battle, Brigadier Field concluded that the yellow devils showed no mercy to them. The resentment of atrocities made Australians not to take any Japanese prisoners. This was propagated by the jungle warfare that works against taking any prisoner from Japan. The enemies hid themselves in the bush with constant possibility of ambush and the opportunities for niceties to ask for surrender were minimal (McQueen 70). The hatred of the enemy was contributed by the mud, the pouring rain, the decomposing vegetation, the humidity and the eerie sounds of the jungle that identified that place. The soldiers fought in small groups or in isolation. The menacing environment and enthusiasm for death contributed significantly to a personal hatred for the Japanese. However, Australians were too impressed by definite martial abilities of the Japanese soldiers. Ability to ambush, resilience, tenacity and fieldcraft made Japanese to be respected by the Australians. Most of the Australian troops were passionate and willing to kill the Japanese (Kato 130). During the Second World War, Japanese knew nothing concerning law and this made the Thakins to realize that they could suck the marrow out of their bones. Indeed the behaviour of their soldiers and authorities turned those states that could welcomed their liberation from western colonialism into enemies (Towle 17). Japan initiated the war and carried it out from its inception with in-depth violation of the generally agreed laws and customs of war. The use of a new technology, the atomic bomb and conventional strategic bombing in relation to equal culpability displayed atrocious acts committed by the Japanese. The execution of Allied prisoners of wars (POWs) by the Japanese soldiers depicted a disturbing scenario of racism. During the forced marches from Sandakan to Ranau, both sick and weak prisoners got starved to death due to scarcity of food. Insufficient medical supplies and muddy and treacherous terrain worsen the ordeal. The threat of forced sexual slavery for female internees was a common occurrence (Stanley162). The massacre of non-combatant women specifically devastated Australians when it was discovered at the end of the war. Nonetheless, the Japanese prisoners of wars encountered strong feelings of mistrust and resentment from the Australian captors. The Australians endured captured for a period more than two years of brutal treatment due to their uncooperative attitudes (Kenny 162). They suffered due to starvation, frequent beatings and torture. In other instances, Chinese civilians were used in conducting medical experiments by the Japanese soldiers. Japanese soldiers forbade its captives from keeping written records. They conducted thorough and constant searches and the offenders were severely punished (Ulrich Straus 230).During the Second World War, many Australians believed that they were facing an invasion by Japanese. The investigation of Australia attitudes to Japan provides considerable data towards the development of the Australia-Japan relationship (Meaney, Kingsley Meaney, 1999). Indeed, many extra ordinary events that occurred in the Pacific region at the twentieth century had a profound effect on Australian attitudes towards Japan. Indeed, the Australians noted that they were facing an enemy at their door step due to the entry of Japan into the war in 1941.Over 15000 Australian troops were captured when Japanese soldiers overran Malaya, Singapore, Ambon and Rabaul. The capture of Port Moresby and Darwin gave the Japanese an opportunity to launch bombing raids and invade Australia to the north and eventually interrupt sea supply lines to the United States of America (USA). The recruits at Jungle training schools termed Japanese as cunning little rat with full of little ruses and tricks. They were not willing to take prisoners from Japan and this was attributed to distrust born from bad experiences with Japanese who offered surrender (Ulrich Straus 12). Consequently, the Japanese acted as human bombs especially through detonating concealed explosives. Australians in New Guinea has relevance on issues of brutality brought to home by several Japanese atrocities at Milne Bay. Signalman on Bougainville did report that Australian provosts caught in a jeep were tied and set alight by the Japanese. Cannibalism as a type of atrocity that occurred in Papua horrified many Australians. Such scenarios created intense hostility towards the perpetrators. The Japanese atrocities had detrimental effects on the troops, for example the troops developed a feeling of disgust and made them enter the battlefield with greater determination to eliminate their enemies (Towle 163). Consequently, the physical evidence of Japanese atrocities rather than propaganda stories were fundamental that made Australians hate the Japanese more than they had no Germans and Italians. The feeling of disgust was heightened with unusual murderous behaviours of the Australians (Thorne 150). In the Great War, fear of Japan was evidenced due to the repeated attacks on Australian immigration policy by the Japanese. They felt a renewed vulnerability due to emergence of Second World War; for instance their inability to defend their extensive coastline and land area. The system of Japanese army allowed young women to be coerced to work as prostitutes in army field brothels (Stanley 113). The acts depicted abuse of fundamental human rights during the wartime. There was rampant use of slave labour or coerced workers to work in heavy construction and in dangerous coal mines. These brutal labour details were illegal with respect to the Geneva Convection protocols. Furthermore, Japan refused to admit the responsibility of various atrocities made but instead made no apologies to anybody and downplayed the historical evidence of aggression in its relevant schools with sophistry and euphemism (Towle 173). Japan established a modern military penal system which allowed criminal offences in its ranks to be punished. Various crucial documents were destroyed through accidental fires and intensive allied bombing during WWII. But at the war’s end, Japan authorities voluntarily destroyed or hid evidences of the country’s war crimes. The number of prisoners captured by Japanese was eight times the number captured in the First World War. During this war, atrocities were the order of the day, for instance the Japanese treatment of its prisoners of wars displayed the darkest chapter for the Australia’s wartime history. These experiences were hard for the entire Australia nation to comprehend. Moreover, prisoners of wars experienced varied degrees of mistreatment and brutality from their captors. Indeed the Japanese war from Manchuria to Hiroshima left a bitter legacy within the entire East and Southeast Asia (McCormack, Hank Nelson 34). After invasion, Japanese soldiers were able to control a large and expendable labour force. The captured prisoners were forced to work in docks, railways, in factories, aerodromes, mines and construction projects (Stanley 159). Indeed, for duration of three and a half years, the prisoners of wards had to battle out with exhaustive work, diseases, starvation and brutality from their Japanese Army. As a result, approximately 8,000 Australians died in desperate and degrading conditions (Bourke 12). Prisoners of wars lacked a balanced diet; the daily ration was without basic proteins and vitamins which resulted to low immunity. As a supplement, the Australian soldiers ate rats, monkeys, cats and snakes that strayed into their paths. In other cases, these prisoners were not able to escape because they were secluded in remote and inhospitable regions. If they try to escape the locals would turn them over to the Japanese army for a reward and they are executed in front of the camp while some form of punishments were inflicted to the rest of the prisoners in the camps as a lesson (Bourke 30). During the Second World War the racial stereotypes and pieces of propaganda were common and they demonstrated the Japanese as less than human beings and are barbaric in nature. Dower touched on different racial stereotypes exhibited by the Americans and Japanese. It ranged from the ideas of referring Japanese as apes and superhuman while Americans as monsters and devils. The Japanese indeed possessed destructive values, brutal wars and exploitative practices (Dower 62).Americans and its allied forces hated Japanese people by comparing to subhuman beasts and vermin because they had been encouraged through films, posters and songs (Saunders, Kay 75). More extreme depictions were picturing them as apes, rats, demons and various insects. Due to attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941 made United States to wage war against inscrutable and treacherous Japan. The Japanese soldiers received negative attitudes due to their fanatical fight against insuperable odds and an adherence of the principle “death before dishonor”. Nevertheless, the effects of racial hatred in the Pacific war showed abundance of evidence in relation to the dominance of the stereotypes. The establishment of psychological warfare was deemed to disseminate pieces of propaganda that could otherwise demoralize Japanese army and heighten the collapse of organized resistance (Gilmore 170). Several soldiers narrated inhumane practices inflicted to him by the Japanese soldiers. These practices included forced slapped that made their noses bleed and face struck with rifle butts, with kicking and beating with boots or wooden logs were the order of the day. These occurrences impacted negatively the attitudes of Australia towards Japan (Bourke 37). Consequently, Dunlop being among the prisoners of Japanese noted that most the captured troops were underfed, not offered medical supplies, constantly overworked and were frequently bashed for no apparent reason. Terrible and inhumane physical punishments such as standing in the scorching sun while holding a rock over the head were given to the prisoners. In other instances, sick men were forced to work especially in the building of the notorious Burma-Thai Railway (Dunlop 383). The few grams of rice, infrequent flavour from meat and fish and watery vegetable stew could not sustain them to work at optimum effort. The Australian people became angered and they remained embittered by the apparent indifference of the Japanese to the sick captured prisoners. Their attitudes towards sick were consistent with use of ruthless force to make many men work as possible. Moreover, the Japanese soldiers thought sickness as a sign of weakness and also due to lack of a will among the captured prisoners. Dunlop Weary constantly opposed every attempt by the Japanese soldiers to force sick men to work regardless of his own safety. Thus, he received huge amounts of beatings and punishments from his captors (Dunlop 384). Conclusion The events and experiences of Second World War in the twentieth century did cement feelings to many Australians that Japan was the “other” to be most feared. The treatment of Europeans and Asians prisoners by Japanese during the Second World War increased the hatred between Japan and its victims. The dire determination of the army to make its soldiers fight till they are killed, the refusal to surrender in any circumstances and to regard the life useless when wounded reinforced the Australians negative attitudes towards the Japanese. The negative attitudes of Australia towards Japan heighten by the following factors; withdrawal of Britain’s naval forces from the Pacific, the Japanese invasion of Korea and the collapse of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Under the international law, prisoners of wars should be well treated and be returned to their respective countries at the end of war. Various forms of maltreatment were termed a serious war crime. Though Japanese didn’t want to exterminate other races, they deliberately humiliated the western prisoners in front of Asians nations. They were trained to extinguish any humanitarian instincts just like the Nazi army. The intellectuals wanted to spread to spread Japanese culture. Morale was crucial to POWS in order to survive malaria, typhoid and beriberi which inflicted them in the hands of Japanese Alternatively, allied treatment of Japanese soldiers fell below the established norms. The Australians soldiers admired the Japanese soldiers for their courage and initiative. As the wars ends, there were a growing signs of reconciliation as the worrying groups struggle to understand past policies and forgive past sufferings. Japan Hs told his allied forces that it would by the Geneva international agreements dealing on prisoners of war. With the surrender of Japanese, the attitude made sure that the guerrilla warfare was not used against the Allied forces. Work cited Adrian Gilbert.”POW: Allied prisoners in Europe, 1939-1945.”John Murray, 2006 Allison B. 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