The Winds Of Time
W.E.B. DuBois

War Between Races

Every American Negro has been unhappy over the war with Japan because it is a war between nations of difference colors, between Europe and Asia. And because we cannot help but believe that the fundamental impulse back of this war was, on the one hand, the century-old determination of Europe to dominate the yellow peoples for the benefit of the white; and on the other hand, the resentment of Asiatics at being considered and treated as inferior to Europeans.

This we see as the basic pattern; but it would not by any means excuse in our minds the unwise and ill-considered attack upon the United States at Pearl Harbor. That very act gave us pause. Many Negroes, many times, and in many places; have looked on revolt and war as the necessary and sole solution of race friction. The experience of Japan has proven two things: that domination of one people by other and selfish races, bad as it is, is not whit better than domination within a race by elements whose aims and ideals are anti-social.

Fight Against Caste

So far as Japan was fighting against color caste, and striving against the domination of Asia by Europeans, she was absolutely right. But so far as she tried to substitute for European, an Asiatic caste system under a "superior" Japanese race; and for the domination and exploitation of the peasants of Asia by Japanese trusts and industrialists, she was offering Asia no acceptable exchange for Western exploitation.

Uneasy, therefore, as we have been about war between the United States and Japan, and about our having as colored people to fight colored people possibly only for the benefit of white people, we have this to remember and sustain us; we are facing the beginning of the end of European domination in Asia. The ideas which Japan started and did not carry through, are not dead, but growing. The utter smashing of the terrible Japanese machine by the American technique is not an exhibition of race superiority of white over yellow; it is the overthrow of an economy and social tyranny which had gripped a fine and progressive people by the throat, and which deserved to be overthrown.

White Troops As Police

Now comes the question, after the overthrow of the dominant powers in Japan, what have we to offer in its place? Here again we are puzzled and discouraged. It is outrageous to have at the head of our fighting forces a man like Halsay whose bitter contempt of colored people can hardly be restrained. He is not fighting a system -- he is fighting and hating a colored race. How far does he represent America? Is there an America which can find itself in this struggle and demand for an emancipated Japanese people, freedom and equality, self-government and development, without slavery and without the contempt of white folk?

The recent declaration by the Allies of the terms offered Japan are reassuring. They are, complete disarmament; the deprivation of recent conquests; the installation of democratic methods in Japan's government; destruction of her war-making industry, but access to outside raw materials. Until a new order of peace and justice is established the Allies will occupy designated points in Japanese territory.

This last requirement is unfortunate and perhaps unnecessary. Whenever white troops are put in control in a colored country the results are notorious. It is to be hoped that this part of the Allied program will be sternly limited in space and time.