| |
Japan
When Tokyo was incinerated, there was scarcely a murmur of protest on the home front.
John W Dower, historian
...scorched and boiled and baked to death...
Major General Curtis LeMay on the fate of the 100,000 people killed in the fire bombings of Tokyo, March 9-10, 1945
...the extermination of the Japanese in toto.
Paul V. McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission, to a public audience in April 1945, about what to to after the war was won. He confirmed that he meant the Japanese people as a whole, "for I know the Japanese people."
You have taught the world that you are infinitely superior to this inhuman foe against whom you were pitted ... Your enemy is a curious race - a cross between the human being and the ape. And like the ape, when he is cornered he knows how to die. But he is inferior to you, and you know it, and that knowledge will help you to victory.
General Blarney, in a speech to his Australian troops, January 1943
...one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.
Brigadier General Bonner Fellers on the U.S. air raids against Japan
Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs.
Slogan used in the U.S. South Pacific Force during WWII
[The U.S. should continue bombing Japan] until we have destroyed about half the Japanese civilian population.
Elliott Roosevelt, the son of president F D Roosevelt, in 1945
You heard me, Colonel. I want no prisoners. Shoot them all.
U.S. Major General at Bougainville, ordering the execution of wounded Japanese attempting to surrender
Flamethrowers, mortars, grenades and bayonets have proven to be an effective remedy. But before a complete cure may be effected the origin of the plague, the breeding grounds around the Tokyo area, must be completely annihilated.
Text explaining a comic picture of the "Louseous Japanicas", a grotesque insect, in the U.S. Marines magazine Leatherneck
Many of the Japanese soldiers I have seen have been primitive oxen-like clods dulled eyes and foreheads an inch high ... They have stayed at their positions and died simply because they have been told to do so, and they haven't the intelligence to think for themselves.
Australian war correspondent, 1944
...the Japs we will be worried about all the time until they are wiped off the face of the map.
Lieutenant General John L. de Witt, on the reasons why Germans and Italians could be treated as individuals while Japanese where interned simply because of their ancestry
...a good solution to the Jap problem would be to send them all back to Japan, then sink the island. They live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats.
The governor of Idaho, on better alternative than to build internment camps for U.S. Japanese in his state
Enemy plans to wipe Japan and the Japanese people off the face of the earth are no propaganda manifestations.
Major Japanese newspaper, after the battle of Iwo Jima
...only a hundred or two were turned in. They had an accident with the rest. It doesn't encourage the rest to surrender when they hear of their buddies being marched out on the flying field and machine guns turned loose upon them.
Charles Lindbergh, who lived and flew as a civilian observer with U.S. forces based in New Guinea in mid-1944
It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Japs with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone.
Charles Lindbergh, who lived and flew as a civilian observer with U.S. forces based in New Guinea in mid-1944
A Jap's a Jap ... You can't change him by giving him a piece of paper.
Lieutenant General John L. De Witt, who administered the internment of U.S. Japanese
Japan has within 40 years gone through the various administrative phases that occupied England about 800 years and Rome about 600, and I am loath to say that anything impossible with her.
Lord Charles Beresford, April 1895
...the process, so necessary and desirable, of laying the cities and other munitions centers of Japan in ashes, for in ashes they must surely lie before peace comes back to the world.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, May 1943
You know tht we have to exterminate these vermin if we and our families are to live ... We must go on to the end if civilization is to survive. We must exterminate the Japanese.
General Blarney, in a speech to his Australian troops, January 1943
Fighting Japs is not like fighting normal human beings ... The Jap is a little barbarian. ... We are not dealing with humans as we know them. We are dealing with something primitive. Our troops have the right view of the Japs. They regard them as vermin.
General Blamey
Kill the Jap bastards! Take no prisoners!
U.S. Marine battle cry on Tarawa
A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched — so a Japanese-American, born of Japanese parents, grows up to be a Japanese not an American.
The Los Angeles Times, about the internment of U.S. Japanese during WWII
In Europe we felt that our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people ... But out here I soon gathered that the Japanese were looked upon as something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches or mice.
Ernie Pyle, war correspondent
Probably in all our history, no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese.
Allan Nevins, American historian
...the almost total elimination of the Japanese as a race ... [because this] was a question of which race was to iurvive, and white civilization was at stake.
The Navy representative to the first interdepartmental U.S. government committee to study how Japan should be treated after the war, May 1943
On August 14, 1945, five days after the Nagasaki bombing and the day before the actual acceptance of surrender terms ... more than 1,000 planes were sent to bomb Japanese cities. The last plane had not returned when Truman announced the Japanese had surrendered. Oda Makoto went out into the streets and found in the midst of the corpses American leaflets written in Japanese, which had been dropped with the bombs: 'Your government has surrendered; the war is over.'
Howard Zinn
The only good Jap is a Jap who's been dead six months ... When we get to Tokyo, where we're bound to get eventually, we'll have a little celebration where Tokyo was.
Admiral William F. Halsey, 1944
[Develop contingency plans for] general incendiary attacks to burn up the wood and paper structures of the densely populated Japanese cities.
General George G. Marshall, in an order to his aides shortly before Pearl Harbor
...the Japs are asking for an invasion, and they are going to get it. Japan will eventually be a nation without cities — a nomadic people.
Vice Admiral Arthur Radford
Once a Jap, always a Jap ... You can't any more regenerate a Jap than you can reverse the laws of nature.
John Rankin, Mississippi, member of the House of Representatives, on why the U.S. Japanese should be interned even to the third and fourth generation
Sesame seeds and peasants are very much alike. The more you squeeze them, the more you can extract from them.
Old motto from the Tokugawa period
|
|
|
