John Dower『容赦なき戦争』

John Dower『容赦なき戦争』平凡社、2001年。

I agree with Dower's idea that racism shaped self and other images and made war fierce and without mercy. However, what I don’t understand is whether Dower believed Japanese racism caused its brutality during the war or its racism was just transmitter. I think that Dower made cause and effect of racism vague.
Racism easily seems to explain the characteristics of ethnic behavior, however we tend to disregard the fact that there are many circumstantial causes behind the behavior of one group.
For example, when we think the reason why Japanese massacre many Chinese during war, we know that Japanese army had very weak commissariat. They didn’t afford to accept many hostile troops as war prisoner in the field; therefore they sometimes executed prisoners on the spot. Also, One of the reason why many war victims occurred in the Russia and China is the scorched earth policy by Stalin, or Chiang Kaishek and Communist China's guerrilla war involving many civil in combat.
As Japanese historian Hata Ikuhiko shown in his study, the cause of notorious Nanjing atrocity in 1937 was combined many factors, Japanese poor commissariat, difficulty of distinguishing Nationalist soldier with civil, and looseness of chain of command of Japanese units.
Racism emerged in history because of its simple and strong explanation of ethnic behavior. Dower’s study taught us the importance of learning “lessen of history.”