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Jack London: The Adventurer-Writer who Chronicled Asian Wars, Confronted Racism—and Saw the Future (Revised)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Daniel A. Métraux
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He stood among the Japanese soldiers wearing a weather-beaten visored cap over his short, dark hair and a rough hewn jacket covering his broad soldiers, a cigarette angling away from his square jaw and a camera dangling from his gloved hand. As they studied documents, the Japanese troops contrasted with Jack London in their box hats and high collared uniforms. A photographer present immortalized London looking like the adventurer and writer that he was, one drawn to the battle like a missionary to his calling, who skillfully recorded the machinations of great powers while sympathizing with the underdogs who struggled to survive.

Type
The Yellow Peril in War, Economics, and Popular Culture
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 12 , Special Issue S13: Course Reader No. 13. White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan's Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930 , January 2014 , pp. 132 - 143
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2014

References

Notes

1 See William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese-Americans in American Fiction, 18501940 (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1982).

2 John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary: Visions of Asia and the Pacific in American Culture (Hanover: Dartmouth University Press, 2005, 108)

3 Richard O’Connor, Jack London: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), 214.

4 Jonah Raskin, The Radical Jack London: Writing on War and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1.

5 John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary, 109.

6 “The menace to the Western world lies not in the little brown man, but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their management.” Jack London Reports, 346

7 See Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program. See also Stephen Endicott, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Critics have strongly challenged Endicott's key points concerning the alleged use of germ warfare in the Korean War.

8 Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion“ in Dale L Walker, Ed., Curious Fragments (Port Jefferson NY: Kenkat Press, 1976), 119.

9 Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999), 91.