JAPS BUTCHER AMERICANS
It was thus that the San Antonio Express, then a Hearst Newspaper, announced the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in its Monday, December 8, 1941 Final Edition. Whether any editor would allow such a headline in a daily newspaper today is highly doubtful, given its racial tone and its shock value, but it accurately describes the general feeling of the American public, who later that same day would hear the American President ask Congress for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. The Congress voted to declare war with only one vote in the House dissenting. The Senate vote was unanimous.
The American anti-Japanese feeling did not peak after Pearl Harbor. It grew steadily throughout the war. Later that same week, as the Japanese onslaught targeted Wake Island in the Pacific, numerous newspapers and radio outlets reported that in reply to a query whether the defenders on Wake Island needed anything, Naval Aviator Commander Winfield Cunningham replied, “Send us more Japs.” Cunningham in fact sent a lengthy dispatch of what was desperately needed on the embattled island, but the message, created by the Navy as propaganda, was a morale booster for the American people.
The earliest days of the Pacific War saw defeat after defeat. As American newspapers presented the increasingly bad news from the Pacific, which was censored, what were in fact significant military losses were covered as heroic resistance. The troops fighting in the Philippines were heroic from the beginning of the campaign until the end, but mistakes of leadership led to the crushing loss of the islands, from the destruction of the air forces on the first day of the campaign to the surrender. Rather than reveal the errors of judgment by American commanders, news reports concentrated on Japanese treachery and butchery, both of which were real.
The Honolulu Star Bulletin reported the attack on Pearl Harbor with the headline; WAR! OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES, perhaps as a nod to the large Japanese population on the island, and the number of Japanese workers on its own staff. 1500 DEAD IN HAWAII CONGRESS VOTES WAR was the headline in the New York World Telegram, which in its text also referred to the enemy as the Japanese. The Baltimore News Post preferred the pejorative “Japs” in its headline covering the attack. The Milwaukee Sentinel announced the attack in the Philippines as being conducted by “Nips” in its headline. The San Francisco Examiner’s huge headline simply read U.S.-JAP WAR.
Throughout the Second World War many newspapers referred to the Japanese enemy as Japs, and advertising and propaganda messages made the practice common as the war dragged on. Young men of 16 years of age in December 1941 were entering the service by December 1943 (some earlier) and entered the war in the Pacific fortified by the anti-Japanese feeling which the enemy brought upon themselves by the nature of their assault, reinforced by the negative references to them in the American press. The San Antonio Express headline, while not perhaps what is now considered politically correct, was nonetheless accurate.