17. Dr. Seuss received the Legion of Merit for his war service
When he returned to civilian life in 1947, it was with the rank of major and the Legion of Merit award for his services to the military and the nation during the course of the war. His return to civilian life marked a return to the writing of children’s books and his experience using the written word, the cartoon, and animation were reflected in his post-war career. The strong anti-Japanese viewpoint which he had held during the war, and which was amply illustrated in his editorial cartoons and propaganda work began to wane. He reflected on the Japanese culture which he had represented in the scripts of training films late in the war, and began to shift his views towards the people of all cultures, which can be seen in several of his later works, but in none more so than the 1954 book, Horton Hears a Who.
It was the second appearance of the character Horton the elephant, who was featured in the pre-war Horton Hatches the Egg (1940). In the story the elephant hears voices from a small speck in a pond, which he learns is a small planet which contained Whoville, occupied by the tiny Whos (later appearing with the Grinch). Horton is led to conclude, as he protects the little community, that “a person’s a person no matter how small”. The book was a reference to the post-war American occupation of Japan and an indication of how much the author’s view of the Japanese people had changed in the aftermath of the war, driven in part by the American use of Japan as a staging base in the recently ended Korean War combat operations. Seuss used the lessons he learned to sway public opinion against the Japanese (and others) during the war to educate children, and dedicated the book to a friend from Japan upon its publication.