The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Rhodes

As an explanation for unfamiliar behavior, bestiality had the advantage that it made killing a formidable enemy easier emotionally. But it also, by dehumanizing him, made him seem yet more alien and dangerous. So did the other common attribution that evolved during the war to explain Japanese behavior: that the Japanese were fanatics, believers, as Grew had preached, “in the incorruptible certainty of their national cause.”1971 The historian William Manchester, a marine at Guadalcanal, argues more objectively from a longer perspective postwar: At the time it was impolitic to pay the slightest tribute to the enemy, and Nip determination, their refusal to say die, was commonly attributed to “fanaticism.” In retrospect it is indistinguishable from heroism. To call it anything less cheapens the victory, for American valor was necessary to defeat it.