Customer Reviews

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

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This is an interesting topic, since very few people before Horne wrote directly and exhaustively about it. Nevertheless, Horne's conclusion is largely unfounded basing on what really happened in history. Horne essentially argued that it was one successful Japanese campaigne after another that finally mentally liberated the colonized peoples of Asia from being psychologically and spiritually subjugated by the White man. This actually is quite untrue. Japan had *already* established itself as militarily equal to, if not superior to, any Western power *in the region* by 1905. Not only did the Western nations at that time acknowledged it, they based their policies on the assumption that the Japanese Empire was their equal. This is evidenced by the way they acquiesced to almost all Japanese demands in the Versailles Conference after the Great War. This, together with the fact that Japan had already established itself as a colonial empire (over Korea and Taiwan), placed Japan squarely within the camp of the family of imperialist nations (though I grant you that the West recognized Japan as equal only reluctantly.)

Aside from overstating the impact of the 1941 invasion, the author also ignored the fact that most Asian peoples (the educated elites, say, in Hong Kong anyways) were aware of horrendous Japanese atrocities committed in Korea and China prior to the invasion. This is especially true in Hong Kong, where most of the upper class families had relations in the Japanese-invaded mainland. So they did not really have much of an anti-colonialism excuse. They had been compradors for the British in the past, and not they're merely switching masters. Racial tension and hatred against the White man played a relatively minor role.

Another thing the author failed to mention was how almost right after the Japanese invaded most SE Asian colonies, the ordinary people, who initially did buy in to the Japanese anti-Western propaganda, became aware of the tyrannical character of the Japanes occupation. How could they had not! Japanese sentinels was authorized to bayonet any "local" who failed to bow to the Imperial Japanese Army standard. Regardless of how people feel about race or racial relation pre-war, this probably was too much even for the most vehement anti-colonial activist to swallow, and most of them, Gen. Aung San for instance, organized anti-Japanese guerilla cells immediately.

I think the problem with the author is that he has been projecting our own experience in the United States into a wholy different historical arena. East Asia in 1930 is different from Postbellum America. Psychologically, most Asian peoples paid (and still pay) much more attention to kinship, ethnicity and nationality than to race. Race itself is a European-American construct, developed in late 19th century by pseudo-scientists of European (mostly German) and American origins. There is not a single country on the surface of Earth that was, is and tragically perhaps will be as race-conscious as the U.S., and it is plainly wrong to project the American mental frame onto what happened in 1940 Asia. As the reviewer below noted: ask any Chinese or South East Asian how they feel about the Japanese invaders and the American/British colonialists respectively, and you'll hear an entirely different story. The grudge against the Japanese Imperial forces is just so much more venomous. This makes sense, since after all the British and American had never bayonet and rape at will. And in light of the raping, looting and killing the Japanese had been doing, being blond-haired and blue-eyed just didn't mean much to the Asian peoples.

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

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.

I purchased "Race War" by Gerald Horne against my better judgement, as the title itself seemed frivolous.I was a child in Malaya in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked us without any warning, and escaped to Australia just before the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
Other family members were not so fortunate: my cousin, Charlie Michie, and my uncle,William Moffat, both civilian engineers, were incarcerated in the most vile concentation camps, and abused daily in total disregard of the Geneva Conventions, until liberated by the British in 1945.Uncle William was sent from Singapore to Kanchanaburi, Thailand, by open rail car,a distance of over 500 miles, in the hot tropical sun.He was forced to work in a cholera camp at the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai.Most of the other prisoners in his camp, mainly Asian civilians,died of starvation and disease.

My godfather's son, Roderick Gordon, also a civilian engineer, was arbitrarily beheaded, along with his civilian colleagues, because they had formerly been weekend soldiers in the Federated Malay Sates Volunteers.His grave is in the British Cemetery at Kanchanaburi, maintained by the British Imperial War Graves Commission.

We returned to our home in Malaya in 1945, to find that many family friends had been brutally murdered by the Kempetai, the Japanese Secret Police.The young daughters of many had been raped.The population had survived on cassava for years, as all rice was confiscated by the Japanese for their own use.Malnutrition was rife.Most of the population had beri beri and dysentery.
I later lived in Japan, from 1970-1974,when I became fairly fluent in Japanese, and enjoyed the experience.I was apologised to numerous times by ordinary Japanese once they learned of the wanton cruelty to which my family had been subjected.I have close Japanese friends who do not speak English, and they have stayed in my home in the US on several occasions.

Gerald Horne's "book" is nothing more than a vicious racist diatribe, full of the most foolish basic errors.I actually laughed out loud at some of what the British would call his "schoolboy howlers".The aim of the Japanese was to seize the raw mateials of South East Asia, and stifle all opposition by the most appaling cruelty and babarism.In addition to being educated in Malaysia,I lived in Hong Kong for 3 years, and have family in Thailand.Let me assure Mr Horne that the Japanese are hated to this day by the older generation.He should be ashamed of this biased racist garbage.

This books fulfils the author's self-serving anti-western political agenda as it completely refuses to acknowledge the purpose and outcome of Japan's purported 'liberation' (ask anyone in South Vietnam what it means to be 'liberated') of Asia. The Japanese needed the Europeans out solely so they could continue their own barbaric imperialism plans. While the Japanese may have had some local sympathizers, these individuals contributed nothing to the Japanese overthrow of their 'oppressors' and quickly found that the Japanese had no more respect for them than their European 'masters' did and butchered Chinese wherever they could find them. The Germans were the great liberators in the Baltic States and we all know how that turned out. With regard to Thailand, it is a well known fact that they have never put up any resistance to any invader.
I traveled Asia extensively inthe 80's and so many times when I met older people who asked me where I was from, the first thing they would say after I told them America was " You saved us from the Japanese". After all those years and so many times...