Seuss Savaged WWII Enemies
During the early years of World War II, Dr. Seuss drew editorial cartoons that blasted isolationists and ridiculed Hitler, but the famous children’s author also portrayed the Japanese using racist stereotypes, professor Richard H. Minear told students and professors at the annual UMass history faculty lecture.
About 150 people filled a Herter Hall Annex auditorium last Wednesday to see and hear Minear present material from his newly published book, “Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel.”
Prior to the U.S. entry into the war, Geisel advocated U.S. involvement. In one cartoon that Minear showed, a woodpecker labeled “Germany” has drilled down trees representing Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France, Holland, Norway, Greece and Denmark and is working on Britain while a U.S. isolationist says, “After he knocks down that last tree he’ll likely be mighty tired.”
“If it hadn’t been for Hitler,” Minear said, “Dr. Seuss might have never drawn an editorial cartoon.”
After the United States entered the war, Geisel exhorted Americans not to waste resources. In a 1942 cartoon titled “Giving the Axis a lift,” a U.S. joy rider drives along in his car. Hitler and a goateed, slanty-eyed Japanese man ride with him and say: “Step on it, kid; ya got gas and rubber to burn.”
Unlike Hitler, Minear said, “the Japanese figure that Dr. Seuss used to represent Japan is not historical but stereotype-based.” Minear, a history professor at UMass, focuses on Japan during World War II.
Minear and his publisher planned to put this cartoon on his book’s cover, Minear said, because it displayed some common themes in Geisel’s cartoons such as commitment to the war effort and targeted both Germany and Japan. Also, Minear said, “it has a nice Dr. Seuss ‘swooshing’ feel to it.”
However, focus groups reacted so negatively to the stereotyping of Japanese people, Minear said, that he and his publisher used a different cartoon.
Meanwhile, in other editorial cartoons, Geisel decried anti-Semitism and anti-black racism. In one, Hitler wraps a Christmas package labeled “Race Hatred – my annual gift to civilization” and asks a U.S. anti-Semite to help tie the bow. In another, Geisel depicted the immense amount of “War Work to Be Done” and a white man putting up a sign, “No colored labor needed,” while two black men look on.
It is in this context that he finds Geisel’s racist portrayals of Japanese people especially disturbing, Minear said, introducing what he said was Geisel’s only cartoon dealing with Japanese Americans.
Geisel portrayed a mass of look-alike Japanese men in Washington, Oregon, and California as the “Honorable 5th Column” acquiring explosives while “Waiting for the signal from home.”
Minear said he thought at first that Geisel might somehow be poking fun at the fear of Japanese Americans. “I kept looking for satire,” he said. “I couldn’t find any.”
The United States government interned 120,000 West Coast Japanese Americans between the years 1942 and 1946, beginning shortly after the cartoon was published.
Americans during the war viewed their two main enemies very diferently, an older man in the audience said during the brief question and answer session: “Japanese were a different kind of enemy. Germans were of us.”
The internment has great significance to American history and culture, an older Japanese man said, “We shouldn’t forget it.”
The national media has given his book attention, Minear said, but it does not want to deal with the issues raised by the anti-Japanese racism present in some cartoons.
“They show us Dr. Seuss’s view of the world in 1941 and ‘42,” Minear said, “and some reflection of U.S. attitudes. In those war years, there was very anti-Japanese stuff.”
People have a tendency to lock Geisel up in the category of children’s author, said Minear. He once showed an anti-isolationist Dr. Seuss cartoon with the signature covered to his class, Minear said, and the political message delayed his students’ recognition of the artwork.
“I hope my work will renew a focus on Dr. Seuss the person,” said Minear.
Before World War II, Geisel, already used the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, drew humorous cartoons for magazines and some advertisements. He published his first children’s book in 1937.
In 1941 and 1942, Geisel drew editorial cartoons full time for the advertising-free newspaper PM, Minear said. “Dr. Seus Goes to War” is the first time that most of these cartoons have ever been republished.
In January of 1943, Geisel joined the war effort producing propaganda materials.
The majority of Geisel’s children’s books, and his fame, came after World War II. Geisel died in 1991 at the age of 87.
[Written for Chris Yurko’s 1999 Fall Journalism 300 class.]