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

Book Description
Japan's lightning march across Asia during World War II was swift and brutal. Nation after nation fell to Japanese soldiers. How were the Japanese able to justify their occupation of so many Asian nations? And how did they find supporters in countries they subdued and exploited? Race War! delves into submerged and forgotten history to reveal how European racism and colonialism were deftly exploited by the Japanese to create allies among formerly colonized people of color. Through interviews and original archival research on five continents, Horne shows how race played a key—and hitherto ignored—role in each phase of the war. During the conflict, the Japanese turned white racism on its head portraying the war as a defense against white domination in the Pacific. We learn about the reverse racial hierarchy practiced by the Japanese internment camps, in which whites were placed at the bottom of the totem pole, under the supervision of Chinese, Korean, and Indian guards—an embarrassing example of racial payback that was downplayed by the defeated Japanese and the humiliated Europeans and Euro-Americans. Focusing on the microcosmic example of Hong Kong but ranging from colonial India to New Zealand and the shores of the U.S., Gerald Horne radically retells the story of the war. From racist U.S. propaganda to Black Nationalist open support of Imperial Japan, information about the effect of race on U.S. and British policy is revealed for the first time. This revisionist account of the war draws connections between General Tojo, Malaysian freedom fighters, and Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam and shows how white racism encouraged and enabled Japanese imperialism. In sum, Horne demonstrates that the retreat of white supremacy was not only driven by the impact of the Cold War and the energized militancy of Africans and African-Americans but by the impact of the Pacific War as well, as a chastened U.S. and U.K. moved vigorously after this conflict to remove the conditions that made Japan's success possible.

About the Author
Gerald Horne is Professor of African & Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (NYU Press, 2000) and From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.


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This is a challenging story, known to specialists but worth retelling from a fresh perspective, about the rise and failure of Japanese ambitions from the 1890s to the 1940s to lead and represent the exploited races of Asia and replace the white man's empire with their own. Horne (African & Afro-American studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) argues persuasively that there was genuine sympathy for the Japanese slogan "Asia for the Asians," but this sentiment was destroyed by Japanese militarists, who proved even less sensitive to local feelings than the British. Starting with opening chapters on the nature of European racism and Asian reactions, the story sweeps broadly, in a sometimes unfocused way, to recount the 1941 fall of Hong Kong and Singapore; the inversion of race hierarchy in the POW internment camps; the ironic role of race in the war, especially among African Americans, who had some sympathy for Japanese anti-imperialism; and the legacy of the racial conflict. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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