US Navy Humor

[LukeFF]

I found this little cartoon from the 1944 ONI recognition manual for Japanese Merchants:

[Char]

:rotfl: :rotfl:

[Sailor Steve]

Cool! I have the manuals and haven't come across that yet!

Pretty racist by today's standards, but mild for the times, and pretty funny taken in context.

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Cool! I have the manuals and haven't come across that yet!

Pretty racist by today's standards, but mild for the times, and pretty funny taken in context.

Do you have ONI 208-J (Revised)? That's where it came from.

Yeah, it would come across as racist today, but Americans have pretty much always come up with ways to make fun of their enemies, whether in jest or malice. That cartoon is just another reference to that trend.

[Sailor Steve]

I have them, but I haven't spent much time on them except for ONI-208 (the general one, not the Japanese one).

[Ducimus]

:rotfl:

I do like the comic though luke, it is very "in period".

[Hylander_1314]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

I found this little cartoon from the 1944 ONI recognition manual for Japanese Merchants:

Reminds me of the WWII Looney Toones short, Tokio Jokio.

Was it racist? Yes, but it was also that way the other way around.

Here's a site for those who haven't seen it, but there are good war flix here, from both sides.

http://www.realmilitaryflix.com/public/main.cfm

It wasn't just Americans and Brits who slighted the enemy with propaganda.

[Ducimus]

Was it racist? Yes, but it was also that way the other way around.

Very true. I was watching a documentary the other day on the pacific war. The japanese it seemed had a "superman" ego as well the Nazi's (interest bedfellows), as they considered the white man inferior, and americans decadent.

Heres part 1 of that documentary:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...KoSwrAPV0dSIDg

I saw part 2 on the TV (not part 1), unfortunatly i can't find part 2 on the web, so part 1 is all you get. Part 2 really layed out how gruesome the pacific really was. Im kind of amazed it hasn't gotten more "silver screen" time then it has, but then again, theres nothing romantic about a brutal war, and the pacific was brutality in its purest form.

[LukeFF]

Some more for you. These are from the 1942 manual on Japanese warship recognition. "DD Unknown No. 1" turned out to be the Akizuki class:

[LukeFF]

Couple more. These are from the German warship recognition manual:

"Jerry Jingles"



"Do we fire or do we not?!"

[Raptor1]

ROFL :rotfl:

I like how they crossed out Akagi, Kaga, the Soryu class and questionmakred Ryujo and the Furutaka class (Was this before or after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons (Which happens to have happened on my birthday))?

[seafarer]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Very true. I was watching a documentary the other day on the pacific war. The japanese it seemed had a "superman" ego as well the Nazi's (interest bedfellows), as they considered the white man inferior, and americans decadent.

Heres part 1 of that documentary:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...KoSwrAPV0dSIDg

I saw part 2 on the TV (not part 1), unfortunatly i can't find part 2 on the web, so part 1 is all you get. Part 2 really layed out how gruesome the pacific really was. Im kind of amazed it hasn't gotten more "silver screen" time then it has, but then again, theres nothing romantic about a brutal war, and the pacific was brutality in its purest form.

And lets not forget their view of other Asian races, especially the Koreans and Chinese. They literally viewed them as subhuman species. All you have to do is read about Nanking to see how low their regard for the Chinese was, such as making a competiitive sport out of how many beheadings an officer could perform in an hour (or using Chinese prisoners for bayonette training). Princeton University has some pretty gut wrenching photo's online of some of the atrocities (here is the link, but seriously, read the warning as many of these are really disturbing - Princeton Nanking Photo").

It's always important with history, if you are to understand it, to be aware of the context of the times. And the context of the 1930's and 1940's was vastly different then now.

[Petur]

:rotfl:

[Arclight]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

"At some battles, such as Iwo Jima, there had been no civilians involved, but Okinawa had a large indigenous civilian population. Okinawan civilian losses in the campaign were estimated to be between 75,000 and 140,000. In addition, it is estimated that more than a third of the surviving civilian population was wounded.

With the impending victory of American troops, civilians often committed mass suicides, urged on by the fanatical Japanese soldiers who told locals that victorious American soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping. Ryukyu Shimpo, one of the two major Okinawan newspapers, wrote in 2007: "There are many Okinawans who have testified that the Japanese Army directed them to commit suicide. There are also people who have testified that they were handed grenades by Japanese soldiers" (to blow themselves up). Some of the civilians, having been induced by Japanese propaganda to believe that U.S. soldiers were barbarians who committed horrible atrocities, killed their families and themselves to avoid capture. Some Okinawans threw themselves and their family members from the cliffs where the Peace Museum now resides. A Japanese American Military Intelligence Service combat translator with the U.S. military, Teruto “Terry” Tsubota, tried to convince civilians to not kill themselves, even climbing into caves to talk to them, but his efforts had limited success.

Edwin P. Hoyt, in "Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict", argues that the Allied practice of mutulating the Japanese dead and taking pieces of them home was exploited by Japanese propaganda very effectively, and "contributed to a preference to death over surrender and occupation, shown, for example, in the mass civilian suicides on Saipan and Okinawa after the Allied landings. Life Magazine's "picture of the week" in May 22, 1944 depicted a beautiful blonde with a Japanese trophy skull sent to her by her Marine lieutenant boyfriend. This image gained widespread circulation in Japan, as did the news that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been presented with a letter-opener carved out out of a Japanese soldiers arm bone by Congressman Walter. In Japanese media the Americans came to be portrayed as "deranged, primitive, racist and inhuman"."

Horrible stuff, and sadly there's lots more to find on this. Maybe such motivations were simply a necessity to be able to get through the day mowing down enemy soldiers...

*This can be considered schocking / disturbing to some. Please take the circumstances at the time into consideration , should you decide to look at it.

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/j.../LIFEskull.jpg

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by Raptor1

ROFL :rotfl:

I like how they crossed out Akagi, Kaga, the Soryu class and questionmakred Ryujo and the Furutaka class (Was this before or after the Battle of the Eastern Solomons (Which happens to have happened on my birthday))?

The manual's date is November 1942, so yeah, it was published after that battle.