“The popular Japanese nickname for the Germans is The Vultures. For several years, Japanese cartoonists have been using the vulture to impersonate Germany… An exasperated German news-agency correspondent told me, ‘Every time our embassy protests against these cartoons to the Japanese Foreign Office, the Japanese claim these vultures are really eagles.'”
“The Nazis won the nickname of ‘vultures’ by making the Japanese feel that Hitler was attempting to reconstruct Germany’s pre-World War I empire in Asia at the cost of Japanese blood.”
“The Japanese do not have the same hatred for the Italians they have for the Nazis. In Japan, the Italians have become the same standing joke they have become elsewhere in the world because they have permitted Hitler to dominate them. Italian diplomats in Japan two years ago protested to the Japanese Foreign Office against ‘undignified’ jokes which Japanese stage comedians were telling about Italy… But the Italians are more than standing jokes to the Japanese. Italy is the pitiful object lesson which all Japanese regard as an eternal warning against too close relations with Hitler.”
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