“Before December 7, 1941, the average American regarded the Jap as a comical little fellow who bowed deeply from the waist and said, ‘So sorry.’…[and] as a fighting man, the Jap was obviously a joke. His army hadn’t been able to to lick poor old broken-down China in four years… This picture was destroyed forever by the bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor… The image of the Jap warrior grew to truly terrifying proportions in the Philippine, Malayan, and East Indies campaigns. He landed on coral-grit shores and advanced through impenetrable jungles. He used bicycles to rush down the Malay Peninsula and tanks to smash through Luzon… Schooled in a medieval code of ethics, believing implicitly in the sacredness of his mission on earth, the Jap is a formidable foe. But the American is just as willing to die for his home and country as the Jap is for his Emperor and ancestors.”
