![]() ![]() Beyond the sheer bad taste is something even deeper. Readers of PM wrote in to protest-more the treatment of Holmes than of Japan. (John Haynes Holmes was a prominent Protestant pacifist minister.) Seuss’s stereotyped “Jap” has a fake halo and holds in his right hand a wicked-looking knife and the severed head of a victim. On January 13 he published the fourth in a series of heavily ironic “War Monuments.” It showed a statue dedicated to John Haynes Holmes “who spoke the beautiful words ‘The unhappy people of Japan are our brothers.’” Dr. But he did so on two occasions that bear on our present concern. Seuss rarely stepped out from behind his easel to address such issues. But racist against Japanese and Japanese Americans he also was.ĭr. Occupation of Japan (Horton=the U.S., Vlad Vladikoff=the Soviet Union, Whoville=Japan) that treats the Japanese with a good deal more sympathy than did the wartime cartoons (much of the condescension, however, remains). Even Horton Hears a Who is an allegory on the U. During the war he took on issues like Black-White racism, and later on he addressed the environment ( The Lorax), the Cold War ( The Butter Battle Book), commercialism ( How the Grinch Stole Christmas), reading for children ( The Cat in the Hat, et al.). Seuss could also have these feet of clay? Forward-looking he was. Why not show that material and invite viewers-people of all ages, including children-to deal with the fact that a man as forward-looking as Dr. I write for people.” 3 What better explanation of the enduring appeal of the books? And of the narrowness of the museum’s focus on children? A second reason, presumably, is that the PM cartoons and the documentaries complicate the loveable narrative of Dr. Outside of my beginner books, I never write for children. Seuss himself said about his intended audience for the Butter Battle Book, and by extension for all his books: “Practically all my books have been written for every age. Here is one account: “Examples of Geisel’s early advertising work and World War II-era propaganda and political illustrations, many of which critics consider racist, are conspicuously absent, but that’s because the museum is aimed primarily at children, said Kay Simpson, president of the Springfield Museums complex.” 2 But here is what Dr. Why does the new museum omit all this? Reporters noticed at once. The immediate stimulus was Japan’s execution of three of the airmen it captured from Doolittle’s 1942 bombing raid on Japan. Seuss’s stereotyped “Jap” has arms that end in claws and feet that end in paws. Or consider this cartoon of October 23, 1942. Consider this cartoon of December 9, 1941, just days after Pearl Harbor. Seuss’s other cartoons dealing with Japan, most have accepted that this cartoon is what it appears to be. Many people in audiences to whom I have showed this cartoon start out hoping that it is tongue-in-cheek, but by the time they’ve seen Dr. This cartoon appeared days before the Roosevelt administration issued the order to round up all “Japanese” living on the west coast. It may owe as much to Gilbert and Sullivan as to the 1930s. ![]() Seuss’s Hitler, the “Jap” stereotype that appears, cookie-cutter style, on all these faces was not based on a historical figure-it isn’t Tōjō or the emperor. It is titled “Waiting for the Signal From Home…,” and it depicts a mass of stereotyped “Japs” marching from Washington and Oregon and California to pick up blocks of TNT from a structure labeled “Honorable 5th Column.” On the roof another “Jap” with a telescope peers out across the ocean. Most notorious is his cartoon of February 13, 1942. Seuss descends to racist characterization and analysis. Particularly in the editorial cartoons but also in the documentary on Japan, Dr. soldiers for their role in the Occupation of Japan, and his two Oscar-winning documentaries shortly after the war-one on Germany, one on Japan (Design for Death, 1947). Seuss’s World War II editorial cartoons in the New York newspaper PM, 1 his work with Frank Capra on the Why We Fight series, the film Our Job in Japan (1945-6) that was intended to prepare U. Seuss-has drawn as much attention for what isn’t there as for what is. Seuss museum in Springfield-rather, the rededication of one of four buildings in the Museum Quadrangle to Dr. Seuss Museum, PM newspaper, World War II propaganda, cartoons, wartime representations of the “Japs”.ĭr. It represents important questions about the representation of writers, heroes, even the beloved, in their finest and least memorable moments. ![]() Seuss Museum in Springfield, against the author’s little known wartime cartoon representations of the Japanese. Abstract: This two-part article reconsiders the legacy of Dr. ![]()
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