You wrote: "...I don't think the Japanese invented the belief that "my race is better." Go back and look at some headlines of the day in the United States. The term "yellow peril" comes to mind."
They may not have invented it, but are absolutely on par with "Us" if not worse when it comes to racism, and exceed our capability for xenophobia by a large factor.
The Japanese are probably the most homogenous society for one that large on the face of the earth. They have a common history that all Japanese share, predating Westerners in many cases. If you don't think that fosters an attitude of racism and xenophobia in the Japanese, you don't know them.
You would never be able to get an individual Japanese person to admit to your face how they view you, they are far too polite on the surface to do so. But if you know their culture and understand the language, it can be shocking to listen to what they say to each other when they don't think you understand. But they would never say those things directly to you.
If all the Japanese in Japan were lined up and asked to describe Americans and other Westerners in one word, the majority would probably come up with “selfish.” The reason for this is simple enough. The Japanese were conditioned for centuries to look upon independent, individualistic behavior—the hallmark of Americans and many other Westerners—as selfish, confrontational and disruptive. Outsiders are perceived as barbarians because they don't conform to cultural mandates and because no loyalty is owed to them. Independence is a social stigma; interdependence brings identity, acceptance, security, and a sense of purpose
I lived in Japan for several years, so I understand them a little better than many Americans do. I genuinely like the Japanese. Their capacity for appreciation of subtle beauty is unparalleled. They are so polite it often makes you want to scream. They are very considerate and generous, and have, in general, a great sense of humor.
I also lived in the Phillipines for several years. The Filipinos remember all too well the occupation of the Japanese. It was not, by any means, a benevolent occupation. Let me tell you, there is a good reason many countries in the Far East are troubled by, and fear, a re-militarized Japan.
Was the fighting different in the Pacific and European theatres? You bet, it was much more primitive and final in the Pacific. Did our military respect the abilities of those they fought equally? Yes. You talk to any Marine or sailor, and the respect he felt for the fighting ability of his Japanese opponent is evident. But that does not translate into kinship, as it may have done in the European theater against the Germans. There were no cases, or very few in the Pacific that parallel the experience of soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge who could hear Germans singing Christmas Carols, where a impromptu truce could unofficially take place for at least a couple of hours, and both sides could see their opponents as very much like themselves.
As for the Bomb, I do not think we disagree. My father, a 30 year naval veteran who served through WWII, Korea and Vietnam, was the speaker at the Veterans Day parade each year until the year he passed away. He got in trouble several years back with the un-PC statement "Dropping the bomb on Japan was the right thing to do." The papers up here the next day had articles like "WWII Vet approves the use of nuclear weapons against Japan" or some similar headline. My dad was not used to dealing with reporters.
So, Japan may not have invented "my race is better" since that prize probably goes to some fairly primitive human tribe, but if you think for even one second that the Japanese were not even more racist than the Westerners who fought them, then I do not believe you understand the Japanese.
I think you and I are pretty much on the same page on this. My guess is the Japanese (in the lump) are every bit as ethnocentric now as they were during WWII. I don't think you can turn away from eons of programming in just a generation or two. I also think that in combatant relations, the Japanese in WWII were about as evil as you can get.
I can say after years of sea stories that there is al least one American that hated the Japanese as much as they hated him. I simply don't think it would cause him to torture a Japanese soldier for fun.