Strip-searching the Japanese, a comic strip classic.

This is the final post on our series of WWII anti-Japanese comics. Check out Terry and Pat strip searching a Japanese POW. That's right, have the juvenile Terry be the one to remove the guy's "g-string". There's nothing weird about that!



-- Click them to enlarge.




Then we get a nice little summary of military propaganda with a humiliated Japanese man in his g-string. Also mentioned is the "short, squat, fairly heavy beard". Beard? There is no earlier mention of a beard but if you look at the previous pages, one would conclude it is meant to say "build". Oops, someone must have forgotten to proofread.

Purely on speculation now, one would conclude that the US military commissioned this little piece from cartoonist Milton Caniff due to the popularity of his strip. Are these Caniff's sentiments? Most likely not but he was a serious American patriot as seen throughout his career. And during the war, political enemy-hating is what brought prejudices like this to life.

Caniff himself often drew ethnic characters with stereotypical exaggerations like the Chinese guide, Connie here from the 'Terry and the Pirates' comic strip. Then again, Connie is the humor relief character in a serious adventure strip so a sillier execution of style is more appropriate. Even still...

It's not an excuse but it was a different time, you know. At least today our culture has the decency to respect Arab and Islamic people while we're at war with them.