These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that confidentially wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country's imperial conquest of China.
Many are the names of the refugee-artists who fled Hitler's Germany for the United States - but few are the Japanese artists we remember who departed fascist Japan for America. This slim article tells the story of Taro Yashima (born Atsushi Iwamatsu, 1908 - 1994) who was brutalized by the militarists in his homeland and fled in 1939.
This article was written by Max Hill, who was serving as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The column consists of his observations as to how the Japanese home front operated during his seven month incarceration.
Click here to read about the Japanese home front during the early period of the Sino-Japanese War.
Click here to read about the W.W. II German home front.
In this article, photographer Frederick L. Hamilton recalled his two years in Japan prior to the Pearl Harbor attack; he let's lose with all he learned concerning how the Japanese perceived the Americans:
"They think we are soft, wasteful, irreverent and stupid...Most serious of all to the Japanese is their belief that we have no spiritual quality, no sense of honor."
After reading this 1941 article you will come away with a full understanding as to how misguided Imperial Japan was to enter into a war with the United States and the British Empire. At the time of the printing, Japan had been engaged in its second war with a very underdeveloped China; even though Japan had held the momentum in that war, it had still driven the Japanese into a life of highly uncomfortable rationing, which would only get worse as their new war expanded.
