Today in "WTF?"
By Wow. Here’s what I stumbled across the other day while researching General John DeWitt’s infamous (and unoriginal) “a Jap is a Jap” remark from WWII. I really was stricken mute by this image, to say nothing of the shop’s name:
Because I was genuinely curious about the back story on this place, I actually called and spoke with the owner-manager for about five minutes this afternoon. It was one of the more unusual conversations I’ve had in quite some time. I introduced myself and explained what I do, and I contextualied the call by pointing out that I’ve been writing off and on about the use of World War II memory in American politics and culture. I was “interested,” I explained, in knowing why the Japanese imperial flag appeared as part of the shop’s logo — and why the name of the business would boast such an obvious racial pejorative.
Among other things, the chap clarified that the owners aren’t Japanese-American, nor do any “Orientals” work there. The shop has been called “Happy Jap’s” for 19 years now, and the name and the logo “just kind of happened, just seemed to fit” with the fact that the shop worked on Japanese cars. He added that his father — a World War II vet — has always hated the fact that his son works on Hondas and Subarus, because they remind him of “some hard times” that he prefers not to discuss. The father evidently bears some “resentment” toward the Japanese, sixty years after the fact.
After getting through the preliminaries, I gingerly wondered if the shop had ever received any complaints about the name or the logo (which I could imagine might be offensive to a variety of Asian-Americans who might not want to be reminded of Japan’s imperial — and also racially chauvinistic — expansion during the 1930s and 1940s). The owner insisted that the only people who were ever offended were “Anglo-Saxons,” never “Orientals.” Sure, he conceded, some people might raise an eyebrow or two, but once they saw the kind of work they do in the shop, they understood that the name was inconsequential. At that point, I resisted the urge to ask if he’d be equally comfortable owning a business called “The Happy Darkie” or “The Happy Redskin.”
He asked me if I found the name offensive, and I explained that yes, as a historian I see nothing redeemable about the term “Jap” and that I discovered his website while searching for information on the internment of 120,000 innocent people who had been scapegoated for the crimes of the Japanese government. I added that the epithet was once a casual feature of white conversation but that we rarely hear it used any more — and for good reason.
That was pretty much the end of the conversation right there. We exchanged our closing pleasantries and left it at that. He had cars to fix and “Orientals” not to offend, and I had some serious head-scratching to do.