Poor Mojo's Two Minute Hate

Considering that the American public had first become aware of the Japanese war machine through that treacherous and unprovoked sneak attack on an American Naval Base, during a time of peace, while the Japanese ambassadors were at that very moment meeting their American counterparts at the State Department, the Japanese people quickly became something else; they became Japs. A brutal and inferior race of savages to be distrusted and despised. A race, in short, to be hated.

And hate them we did. We hated them openly, willingly and without reservation. And we didn't just hate their leaders or their armies and their navies, we hated THEM, the Japs themselves, the bloodthirsty, sadistic little squinty-eyed monkeys. We matched their racial hatred of us with our racial hatred of them. No caricature, no obscenity, no epithet could be too vile to describe a Jap. If you were a patriotic American, be you man, woman or child, you automatically hated the Japs. It quickly became a necessary adjunct to our national persona, second nature, like loving your mother and apple pie. It was not only that it was O.K. to hate the Japs, it was considered your sacred duty. And the more fervently you expressed this hate, the more patriotic you became, and the more patriotic you became, the stronger America became.

It was as clear as crystal.

And our hate was essential to the cause, we could not have won the war without it.