You're a Sap, Mr. Jap

This Popeye cartoon is one of various cartoons that have been pretty much banned due their racist nature. Such cartoons, though, are at the same time an excellent insight into the way people thought at the time the cartoon was made.

This cartoon was made during the time of World War II and, as such, reflected the widespread negative stereotyped view of the Japanese. There were also cartoons making fun of the Germans, particularly Adolph Hitler.

The general theme of this cartoon is that Popeye is sailing in the Pacific Ocean on a rather small boat. He runs across some Japanese on a extremely large ship of some sort and, naturally, gets into a fight with them.

As with the standard Popeye cartoon, he seems to lose at first but then opens his spinach can, eats his spinach and then promptly proceeds to beat up the Japanese and sink their ship. The stereotyped view of the Japanese comes across in the way they are drawn and in the way they speak.

This doesn't make any of this type of approach proper or right, especially in peaceful times, but during times of war people's tolerance goes down considerably, and in World War II there were some particularly strong feelings against the Japanese due to Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese were also disliked, to some extent, because they were the "other." The average person in the U.S. at the time had virtually no understanding of Oriental history or thought. The Nazis, at least, were German and, as such, were at least somewhat understood by the average person. Indeed, during World War II there were no mass relocations of German or Italian citizens as there was of Japanese-Americans even though we were fighting the governments of all three countries and thus all three groups were "potential" dangers to the U.S.

The buck teeth and thick glasses were part of the stereotyped image of the Japanese.

The two Japanese give Popeye a peace treaty which he signs. While he's signing it they hit him various times emphasizing the view of the Japanese as being sneaky people (again, a reference to Pearl Harbor.)

A huge Japanese warship rises from the waters and sinks Popeye's ship.

One of the most amazing lines is when Popeye says "Come back there ya double-crossin' Japanzees" when he's attacking their ship.

Popeye leans against a pipe and it gives way causing the entire ship to fall apart. He later finds a piece of wood that says "Made in Japan". At the time it was felt that things made in Japan were inferior to things made in the U.S. even though, at the start of the war, the Japanese fighter planes were actually superior to the American planes. It was only near the end of the war when kids of high school age and younger were manning the factories and producing the airplanes and other armaments that the quality of things suffered seriously (but there were other things contributing to that, of course, other than just the age of the workers.)

The cartoon then goes on to show a Japanese soldier deep in the ship contemplating killing himself since they are losing. This again supported the view that the Japanese were fanatics, willing to kill themselves rather than give up. It is true that they did believe in killing themselves rather than surrendering, and they even came up with the concept of the kamikazees, pilots who dove their planes on purpose into American ships. Their views were rooted in their culture and were "fanatic" to American culture, but understandable to Japanese culture.

He drinks the gasoline and eats the firecrackers, then sets fire to them.

Popeye watches as the Japanese ship explodes and sinks.

Then you see the Japanese flag sinking, going round and round like something in a toilet, and you hear the sound of a toilet flushing.

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