War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRC [Paperback]

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
 
AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST
 
Now in paperback,War Without Mercyhas been hailed byThe New York Timesas “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book . . . a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.”
 
Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most . . . with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”

Preface • xi
 
PART I: ENEMIES
1. Patterns of a Race War • 3
2. “Know Your Enemy” • 15
3. War Hates and War Crimes • 33
 
PART II: THE WAR IN WESTERN EYES
4. Apes and Others • 77
5. Lesser Men and Supermen • 94
6. Primitives, Children, Madmen • 118
7. Yellow, Red, and Black Men • 147
    Illustrations • 181
 
PART III: THE WAR IN JAPANESE EYES
8. The Pure Self • 203
9. The Demonic Other 234
10. “Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus” • 262

PART IV EPILOGUE
11. From War to Peace • 293

Notes • 319
Bibliography • 367
Picture Credits • 385
Index • 387

War Without Mercyhas been widely pralĂ*