RACE WAR! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire, by Gerald Horne. New York and London: New York University Press, 2004, 407 pp., 4,478 yen (cloth).

Racism is a particularly dirty issue of World War II in Asia that is often swept under the carpet. Tokyo's claim that Japan stood up against European domination and colonial exploitation is usually dismissed as self-serving propaganda. Gerald Horne demonstrates that this is too simplistic a view reflecting the general tendency to lionize the victor and vilify the vanquished.

Tokyo's battle cry, "Asia for the Asians!" neither was unfounded nor fell on deaf ears. It was not difficult for Japan to expose and take advantage of the system of white supremacy, the "glue that held colonial empires together."

Race wasn't a matter of secondary importance, but a key factor of the various conflicts fought out on the Asian mainland and in the Pacific. This is Horne's principal argument for which he provides so much evidence that it is almost too tiring to read. Even during the war, white racial arrogance was everywhere.