“So after the war we had quite a pickle on how to turn it all off. We wanted to have a cooperative Japan and the USSR was looming.”
Interesting take on how to “turn it all off.” That definitely was a huge quandary.
I’ve got a bit of a personal parallel. My dad’s family immigrated from Germany in 1927 (dad was three), just 9 years after the WW 1 Armistice (about the same amount of time that “Bad Day at Black Rock” took place after WW 2). The hatred toward Germans because of the ferocity of long drawn-out vicious trench warfare, the new use of machine guns, the use of gas against troops, etc was close to the hatred of the Japanese. It was tough living in The Bronx nine years after the close of WW 1. On the plus side, my dad learned some good street fighting skills and went on to box in the Marine Corps.
Yeah, the WWI propaganda really got some serious German hate going in that era.
Hamburger became Salisbury Steak and Liberty Sandwiches. Sauerkraut was liberty cabbage. People killed dachshunds. German Shepherds were suddenly “police dogs”. The list was long. I know of one place in Fort Madison Iowa, the German-American bank building is still there. In the stone on top, “German” is chiseled away.
My Grandma had a German accent and left New York when she married grandpa who was a WWI sailor. He took her down to East Texas, heart of KKK thinking in the early 20s. She had a rough adjustment too. A German accented Catholic woman in the heart of east Texas in the 20s.