In care there are younger viewers who don't get two of the earlier jokes, the announcer is referencing a laxative called "Serutan" ("Natures" spelled backwards), and the "asbestos" curtain was common in many theaters because of fear of the curtains catching fire. Many times the curtain would actually have the word "ASBESTOS" sewn onto it to reassure the audience.
This was a war propaganda short. Yea, it's real racist but you've got to remember your countries history.....you shouldn't just sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened!
@sawanaki That was Mel Blanc, and the voice was a character he came up for his skits for programs on the Armed Forces Network. It was a character called "The Sad Sack" and spoke in a rambling stutter with sentences ending in a way opposite as they were expected, much like like they were in this cartoon.
@SparkyMK3 There were frequent fears of fires in theaters, so the large stage curtains were made with asbestos cloth, and often had the word "ASBESTOS" sewn onto them. One cartoon even worked it into a gag, reading "WE TRY - ASBESTOS - WE CAN".
Ah? I thought the first time was in Psycho; a scene sometime before the infamous stab scene, they show Marion Crane tearing up and flushing a note. Hm, maybe one was the first time for Film, and this for TV?
Before our time, but the gag was always used in MAD Magazine. The line goes "Nature's spelled backwards is Serutan." Serutan was a laxative. It helped one defecate. Swapping Yamashita, to equate Japanese with fecal matter, was the gag, a triple entendre if you will...South Pole/North Pole I'll leave for somebody else...
3:26-more adult humor. Though it's pretty tame compared to the adult humor you see today. It's certainly wholesome compared to the raunchy x rated full length feature cartoons of Ralph Bakshi's FRITZ THE CAT & HEAVY TRAFFIC in the 1970s.
You're absolutulely right, that response of mine was short sighted, Mel Blanc had more versatility and range than just about any other voice man in animation.
Well actually you're right. The movie Psycho was the first ever time a toilet was shown and flushing something down. As I mentioned, in Leave it to Beaver, only the toilet's water tank was shown and not the whole thing.
What disturbs me is that if the US wasn't so PC in present day, we'd probably see similar productions, but with Middle eastern peoples in the role of the Japanese... But great job on finding this cartoon, where did you manage to get it?
A number of theatres had curtains made with asbestos lining after horror stories of people dying in fires caused when the curtains caught fire. Often they had the word "ASBESTOS" sewn into the fabric to reassure the audience. I remember one cartoon that used a similar gag with the curtain reading (in pun) "WE TRY - ASBESTOS - WE CAN".
Can anyone explain to me two references in this cartoon? First of all, the Japanese announcer's last line "Or, nature's spelled backwards is yamashita". It appears this was considered a big joke at the time, since he does a slight pause after that line, but I don't get it. Second, somewhat later on Tokyo Rose uses the expression "South pole and the North pole, that's what!" -- does anyone know what that means?
This is not Pvt. SNAFU. This is Seaman Hook for the Navy. There were only 3 cartoons featuring Mr. Hook made, mainly for life after the war. Hank Ketchum helped in the character design of Mr. Hook. Ketchum further went on to develop the comic strip "Dennis The Menace." Can you see the similarities between Dennis and Mr. Hook? Tokyo Rose was a real person. She was a Japanes-American that supported the Japanese during the war.
I saw that manual in the memorable book Life Goes To War which I have copy of. You mentioned in your comment about our objective to portray the Japanese as subhumans. Well portraying the Japanese in an American cartoon or movie was pretty mild compared to how the Japanese treated American servicemen in POW camps. They treated Americans and other Allied soldiers worse than any animal.
@halodudeh117 Is there some reason you're responding to a comment that's two years old? The point is that if we cling to the bad things that one group did during a war (or outside a war, for that matter), then other people have the same right to cling to bad things that we did to them. At some point, people do have to be willing to forgive, and if not forget, accept that we can only change what will happen, not what has already happen.
@Hobo42pt If you still have WW2 War Bonds, contact your local dealer of collectible coins and stamps for a price quote. There are a lot of WW2 memorabilia collectors, and they might be willing to pay good money for them.
I know your post is 11 years old, still I hope you see this. That's a holdover from the really old days of theater, when you used fire to light things. After a few really bad fires, theaters would have an asbestos drape along with the grand drape to stop a backstage fire from firing the auditorium. You see this a *lot* in cartoons up to about 1950.
That's not true, Mel Blanc has done many foreign accents in the tens of thousands cartoons his voice appeared; Spanish, German, mock Russian, Scandanavian, Southern accents, black Southern accents, British, Irish, and of course Japanese as demonstrated in this WWII cartoon. Mel was known as The Man of a Thousand Voices.
I know, I've seen it. It's 'You're a sap, Mr. Jap' a cartoon from 1942. The interesting thing about it is that it shows Popeye making a comment about the poor quality of Japanese manufactured goods. A study who did research on it was surprised to see the stereotype go back that far (most people think it was a 60's phenomenon, which Japan worked to remove... successfully.)
Depends on the propaganda, Some of it was pretty brilliant IMHO, Such as 'In The Fuhers Face' from Disney and 'Battle Ship Potemkin' from Eisenstein, Not that I would rank this toon that high at all myself. Bear in mind however that things like the Batann death march were on quite alot of peoples mind and that 'Tokyo Rose' was probably the most hated woman in WW2.
Mr. Hook seems to have a similar nasal voice sans the New England accent to Peter Griffin. If Hook's laugh was elongated it would be very similar to Peter's. Of course Seth MacFarlane wouldn't be born for another 29 years after this was made!
I think this is the first time ever they showed someone on a toliet. Back then they had some very high standards and rules of what they could and could not show. For one thing, a real toliet wasn't shown on TV (or the movies maybe) until Leave it to Beaver in the 50's, and even then, it was only after a massive struggle and they finally permitted only the water tank to be shown and not the whole thing.
@@WorgenGrrl It was never shown to the public, yes. Which is why they got away with full-on nudity and raunchy jokes that would have gotten you fired for even hinting at proposing it for a public cartoon. Tex Avery's stuff was as hardcore as it got (and it was pretty hardcore... they had strippers in those cartoons!) but what they had there was still mild by comparison to the SNAFU stuff.
Even today, television still can't takes things as far as a theatrical Look at FRITZ alongside BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA or SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER, UNCUT for a better comparison.
Are you kdding me? if you recall, the U.S. did not force hundreds of thousands of German Americans or Italian Americans into internment camps during the war. It would be the 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were specifically coerced out of their homes and into internment camps by executive order; they would be the ones to embody Americans' fear of the "enemy."
Without intending to sound callous, nasty things happen in wars. Neither Japan nor the US has its hands clean. We could argue forever about who's hands are dirtier, or who committed the worst atrocities, but it would have no point. World War II was a horrific war, and that's all there is to it. I would like to think that I could forgive the descendants of people who committed atrocities against my country in a war. But if you can't, at least remember that most of us were not yet born then.
Imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in internment camps in the American Heartland during World War II, bad and unjusitfied as it was, was positively mild compared to how American, Chinese and other Allied POWS were treatd in Nip (and that word isn't meant to be offensive) concentration camps during the war. Some people have actually called those internment camps concentration camps.
Yes, I'll admit that 70 years later it's really easy to say things like "Two wrongs don't make a right." and there's really no comparison to say Japanese American civilians being put into internment camps in America (not an endorsement of that practice by the way) and the way American & Allied soldiers were treated in Japan, not to mention the way the Japanese would treat the Chinese before and throughout WW2.
I guess just for me at least Why We Fight isn't as visually memorable as some of the other propaganda I've mentioned, Why We Fight for me at least came across as a sanctimonious sermon compared to say some of Eisenstein's best and most memorable propaganda films, Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky and others.
I was never quite as impressed with Capra's Why We Fight, As I was with Riefenstahl's Triumph Of The Will, It's about the most twisted propaganda film you will ever see and for me has far more of an impact than Capra's series, I'll always love both Comic Book and Cartoon and illustrated WW2 propaganda from that era however, Yes the Japanese stereotypes aren't PC these days but we were at war back then and the propaganda reflects that.
I don't mean to be didactic. This was a response to an assertion that Japan/the Japanese would NOT have been ridiculed had there not been WWII going on. Also, I'm puzzled as to why everyone's offended by people describing the toon as racist. I mean, it IS racist. This is actually why I find these cartoons fascinating, at least from an American standpoint! They mark the historical route of Asian representation in the media today, shedding light on how present racist stereotypes came to be.
We ought to sell war bonds again. And incidentally did anyone really take Tokyo Rose seriously? I once read that someone claimed she sounded like Gracie from George Burns and Gracie, not exactly an intimidating character to take seriously.
Yes....you're very correct Dan. But honestly, if you were looking for a mirror into the past about this time, can you agree that this type of thing is a perfect reflection of the attitude of the public? Lets face it. If the characters were replaced by Iraqis or Iranians I'm willing to bet there'd be much more people tolerant of it. Not saying that's right by any stretch of the imagination. But sadly it is what it is.
i've been lookin 4 this cartoon 4 ages, its amazin, it would hav been better if it was snafu instead of mr hook, bt its still gr8!!! jst as good as any other clampett cartoon. shame they didnt use the woman at the end in the main warner bros cartoons, she would hav been very popular, possably better than tex avery's red hot riding hood.
I am Asian and I'm more than pissed, I'm Mad as Hell! Let me tell you something boys and girls: you have no idea how gruesome death can be in the hands of the Japanese during their Pacific campaign!! 'nuff sed. . .
![[TAS] NES Lunar Pool by eien86 in 22:53.62](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WSPpKtAprB8/mqdefault.jpg)
I wish these were more available, they're great! Hook seems to be a more competent cousin of Snafu.
This video was made the year I was born
In care there are younger viewers who don't get two of the earlier jokes, the announcer is referencing a laxative called "Serutan" ("Natures" spelled backwards), and the "asbestos" curtain was common in many theaters because of fear of the curtains catching fire. Many times the curtain would actually have the word "ASBESTOS" sewn onto it to reassure the audience.
Of course they didn't know about the dangers of Asbestos back then.
This was a war propaganda short. Yea, it's real racist but you've got to remember your countries history.....you shouldn't just sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened!
Compared to what the Japanese used to do to prisoners, a little racist propaganda I can deal with.
Yamashita was a Japanese general in World War II and was hanged after the war for war crimes.
@sawanaki That was Mel Blanc, and the voice was a character he came up for his skits for programs on the Armed Forces Network. It was a character called "The Sad Sack" and spoke in a rambling stutter with sentences ending in a way opposite as they were expected, much like like they were in this cartoon.
@SparkyMK3 There were frequent fears of fires in theaters, so the large stage curtains were made with asbestos cloth, and often had the word "ASBESTOS" sewn onto them. One cartoon even worked it into a gag, reading "WE TRY - ASBESTOS - WE CAN".
Ah? I thought the first time was in Psycho; a scene sometime before the infamous stab scene, they show Marion Crane tearing up and flushing a note.
Hm, maybe one was the first time for Film, and this for TV?
Before our time, but the gag was always used in MAD Magazine. The line goes "Nature's spelled backwards is Serutan." Serutan was a laxative. It helped one defecate. Swapping Yamashita, to equate Japanese with fecal matter, was the gag, a triple entendre if you will...South Pole/North Pole I'll leave for somebody else...
There was also Snafu's brother, Tarfu who was in the Navy.
She was sitting on the crapper, wasn't she?
Thanks for the information! Maybe the gag was also playing on the similarity of "Yamashita" with "I yam a-shittin'", or something like that?
The gag is based on the ad slogan "Natures spelled backwards is Serutan." It was a brand of laxative.
I love Tokyo rose's shoes/flip flops
It was to show she was a Japanese version of a Bobbie Socker.
They're more funny than what we have today. TAKE THAT FAMILY GUY!
3:26-more adult humor. Though it's pretty tame compared to the adult humor you see today. It's certainly wholesome compared to the raunchy x rated full length feature cartoons of Ralph Bakshi's FRITZ THE CAT & HEAVY TRAFFIC in the 1970s.
You're absolutulely right, that response of mine was short sighted, Mel Blanc had more versatility and range than just about any other voice man in animation.
That's how I understood it, reading a memoir of a veteran of the 82nd Airborne.
Well actually you're right. The movie Psycho was the first ever time a toilet was shown and flushing something down. As I mentioned, in Leave it to Beaver, only the toilet's water tank was shown and not the whole thing.
Aside from the teeth ( BTW, what up with the teeth on the Japanese in this?) Tokyo Rose is kinda cute.
+Annabelle Aldaco By enforcing stereotypes in propaganda like this, it was a way of dehumanizing the enemy.
i do believe Rod Scribner drew Rose in this cartoon. doesn't he draw the most appealing women?
@@roxposting and the wildest most rubberish movements, so yeah, sure it's him
At around 0:13 , you can hear the music from “Tokio Jokio”
5/5 just for the Tokyo Rose animation-wish more girls were done like that in cartoons. :-)
The U.S. Army had "Pvt. SNAFU", and the U.S. Navy has "Mr. Hook."
Pretty nifty, huh. ;)
and TARFU.
while the marines had mcguillocuddy
What disturbs me is that if the US wasn't so PC in present day, we'd probably see similar productions, but with Middle eastern peoples in the role of the Japanese...
But great job on finding this cartoon, where did you manage to get it?
A number of theatres had curtains made with asbestos lining after horror stories of people dying in fires caused when the curtains caught fire. Often they had the word "ASBESTOS" sewn into the fabric to reassure the audience. I remember one cartoon that used a similar gag with the curtain reading (in pun) "WE TRY - ASBESTOS - WE CAN".
This was a military informational film, and wasn't subject to the Hays Office restrictions.
Can anyone explain to me two references in this cartoon? First of all, the Japanese announcer's last line "Or, nature's spelled backwards is yamashita". It appears this was considered a big joke at the time, since he does a slight pause after that line, but I don't get it. Second, somewhat later on Tokyo Rose uses the expression "South pole and the North pole, that's what!" -- does anyone know what that means?
Like to add that that last line was meant as satire.
the rest of it I was being serious.
I still have those War Bonds. I wonder if they're worth anything now?
Good Find ! History, so that History does not repeat itself
This is not Pvt. SNAFU. This is Seaman Hook for the Navy. There were only 3 cartoons featuring Mr. Hook made, mainly for life after the war. Hank Ketchum helped in the character design of Mr. Hook. Ketchum further went on to develop the comic strip "Dennis The Menace." Can you see the similarities between Dennis and Mr. Hook? Tokyo Rose was a real person. She was a Japanes-American that supported the Japanese during the war.
Srry, made that comment before watching video, as mentioned in comment, although having seen this kind of stuff before, I knew what to expect.
I like the little rhyme the dollar bill says makes me laugh
Arthur Lake, who played Dagwood Bumstead in the BLONDIE movies does the voice of Sailor Hook.
""Natures' spelled backwards is SERUTAN", the brand of a popular vegetable laxative at the time.
Best. Navy. Shell. Ever.
Not only does it give your enemys activated explosives, It also gives you Money and nice cars!
are you all forgetting the context of the time, he fact that the japanese sided with hitler?
Did they have silicon implants back in 1945?
Tokio rose??
I saw that manual in the memorable book Life Goes To War which I have copy of. You mentioned in your comment about our objective to portray the Japanese as subhumans. Well portraying the Japanese in an American cartoon or movie was pretty mild compared to how the Japanese treated American servicemen in POW camps. They treated Americans and other Allied soldiers worse than any animal.
Absolutely.
@halodudeh117 Is there some reason you're responding to a comment that's two years old?
The point is that if we cling to the bad things that one group did during a war (or outside a war, for that matter), then other people have the same right to cling to bad things that we did to them. At some point, people do have to be willing to forgive, and if not forget, accept that we can only change what will happen, not what has already happen.
But the opening of the cartoon siad: United States Navy Presents...
2:47 top 10 saddest anime deaths
HOOOOOWWWW-old is she?!?! I love old cartoons.
One reason why history will repeat itself.
In January 1977, just days before he left office, outgoing president Geral Ford, gave Tokyo Rose an official pardon by telephone.
@Hobo42pt If you still have WW2 War Bonds, contact your local dealer of collectible coins and stamps for a price quote. There are a lot of WW2 memorabilia collectors, and they might be willing to pay good money for them.
3:26 Here, Seaman Tarfu becomes the first transgendered sailor in the U.S. Navy, though by accident.
But whaddaout the front teeth?
There's that Japanese/Asbestos joke again, the other is in that one 'toon with Daffy and the Nazi crows.
I don't quite get it. ^^;;;;
I know your post is 11 years old, still I hope you see this. That's a holdover from the really old days of theater, when you used fire to light things. After a few really bad fires, theaters would have an asbestos drape along with the grand drape to stop a backstage fire from firing the auditorium. You see this a *lot* in cartoons up to about 1950.
yes it's sad they felt they had to visually denigrate the enemy.
The Mr. Hook character was created by Hank Ketchum, who later went on to create the well-known comic strip and cartoon character, Dennis the Menace.
Oriental characters with buckteeth and glasses were depicted in catoons long after World War II, even into the 1970s.
In two WWII-era Popeye cartoons, Popeye sinks an enemy battleship, and while it sinks the sound effect is of a toilet flushing.
Bill Melendez did alot of animating for this one.
That's not true, Mel Blanc has done many foreign accents in the tens of thousands cartoons his voice appeared; Spanish, German, mock Russian, Scandanavian, Southern accents, black Southern accents, British, Irish, and of course Japanese as demonstrated in this WWII cartoon. Mel was known as The Man of a Thousand Voices.
I showed this video to my great uncle, he served in the pacific during the war, and he says they got that bitch Tokyo Rose down well.
Fritz is a wonderful movie.
I know, I've seen it. It's 'You're a sap, Mr. Jap' a cartoon from 1942. The interesting thing about it is that it shows Popeye making a comment about the poor quality of Japanese manufactured goods. A study who did research on it was surprised to see the stereotype go back that far (most people think it was a 60's phenomenon, which Japan worked to remove... successfully.)
Depends on the propaganda,
Some of it was pretty brilliant IMHO,
Such as 'In The Fuhers Face' from Disney
and 'Battle Ship Potemkin' from Eisenstein,
Not that I would rank this toon
that high at all myself.
Bear in mind however that things like the Batann death march were on quite alot of peoples mind and that 'Tokyo Rose'
was probably the most hated woman in WW2.
Mr. Hook seems to have a similar nasal voice sans the New England accent to Peter Griffin. If Hook's laugh was elongated it would be very similar to Peter's. Of course Seth MacFarlane wouldn't be born for another 29 years after this was made!
Wow! Talk about not PC! I'm glad they are not the enemy anymore!
It's okay.
I think this is the first time ever they showed someone on a toliet. Back then they had some very high standards and rules of what they could and could not show. For one thing, a real toliet wasn't shown on TV (or the movies maybe) until Leave it to Beaver in the 50's, and even then, it was only after a massive struggle and they finally permitted only the water tank to be shown and not the whole thing.
Well this was probably only shown on Military Bases.
@@WorgenGrrl It was never shown to the public, yes. Which is why they got away with full-on nudity and raunchy jokes that would have gotten you fired for even hinting at proposing it for a public cartoon.
Tex Avery's stuff was as hardcore as it got (and it was pretty hardcore... they had strippers in those cartoons!) but what they had there was still mild by comparison to the SNAFU stuff.
0:40-adult humor, you would usually see a man doing that.
Even today, television still can't takes things as far as a theatrical Look at FRITZ alongside BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA or SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER, UNCUT for a better comparison.
Even though this is racist it's still my favorite Hook cartoon because it's so darn silly! XD
EXACTLY LMAO
Are you kdding me? if you recall, the U.S. did not force hundreds of thousands of German Americans or Italian Americans into internment camps during the war. It would be the 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were specifically coerced out of their homes and into internment camps by executive order; they would be the ones to embody Americans' fear of the "enemy."
Without intending to sound callous, nasty things happen in wars. Neither Japan nor the US has its hands clean. We could argue forever about who's hands are dirtier, or who committed the worst atrocities, but it would have no point. World War II was a horrific war, and that's all there is to it.
I would like to think that I could forgive the descendants of people who committed atrocities against my country in a war. But if you can't, at least remember that most of us were not yet born then.
people will use any video as an excuse to make the craziest statements.
Imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in internment camps in the American Heartland during World War II, bad and unjusitfied as it was, was positively mild compared to how American, Chinese and other Allied POWS were treatd in Nip (and that word isn't meant to be offensive) concentration camps during the war. Some people have actually called those internment camps concentration camps.
nothing crappy about it.
This is Bob Clampett at his best
Yes, I'll admit that 70 years later it's really easy to say things like "Two wrongs don't make a right." and there's really no comparison to say Japanese American civilians being put into internment camps in America (not an endorsement of that practice by the way) and the way American & Allied soldiers were treated in Japan, not to mention the way the Japanese would treat the Chinese before and throughout WW2.
It was made by the U.S. Navy.
Good grieve even the geishas weren't spared.
Yes she was, that's why I called it adult humor.
Man... You could bite a coconut in half with those chompers. Its no wonder we had trouble fighting the Japanese, one bite and you lose an arm.
Oh hai, Fox.
I guess just for me at least Why We Fight isn't as visually memorable as some of the other propaganda I've mentioned, Why We Fight for me at least came across as a sanctimonious sermon compared to say some of Eisenstein's best and most memorable propaganda films, Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky and others.
i like and love this cartoon ))))
This shit is F'n hilarious !!! thanks for posting :)
I was never quite as impressed with Capra's Why We Fight,
As I was with Riefenstahl's Triumph Of The Will,
It's about the most twisted propaganda film you will ever see
and for me has far more of an impact than Capra's series,
I'll always love both Comic Book and Cartoon and illustrated WW2 propaganda from that era however, Yes the Japanese stereotypes aren't PC these days but we were at war back then
and the propaganda reflects that.
I don't mean to be didactic. This was a response to an assertion that Japan/the Japanese would NOT have been ridiculed had there not been WWII going on. Also, I'm puzzled as to why everyone's offended by people describing the toon as racist. I mean, it IS racist. This is actually why I find these cartoons fascinating, at least from an American standpoint! They mark the historical route of Asian representation in the media today, shedding light on how present racist stereotypes came to be.
We ought to sell war bonds again. And incidentally did anyone really take Tokyo Rose seriously? I once read that someone claimed she sounded like Gracie from George Burns and Gracie, not exactly an intimidating character to take seriously.
I understood that the troops listened to Tokyo Rose for the music and ignored the propaganda.
I don't FRITZ THE CAT has ever been aired on tv.
I love this cartoon!!!
It's called exaggeration. it's what cartoons are meant to do.
Also, these are the greatest cartoons of all time.
I'm sure that some Liberals opposed it.
Sorry, that should be "North pole and the South pole, that's why!"
I can't believe they showed a woman siting on the toilet! I thought people were prudes back then?
Love the gag with her on the toilet.
they got the wrong girl
i think either jimmy carter or gerald ford pardoned her
Hm, so it has nothing in specific to do with any of the Axis powers, then?
Thanks for the info
Heh, asbestos and reassurance....
Mel Blanc was Jewish and I've never heard him in cartoon doing a character with a Hebrew or Yiddish accent.
Yes....you're very correct Dan. But honestly, if you were looking for a mirror into the past about this time, can you agree that this type of thing is a perfect reflection of the attitude of the public? Lets face it. If the characters were replaced by Iraqis or Iranians I'm willing to bet there'd be much more people tolerant of it. Not saying that's right by any stretch of the imagination. But sadly it is what it is.
Understandedly the slant WB gave this for propaganda purposes, still, ' love' tokyo rose, overall CRAZEE cartoon! Thanx for th post
why do amekoes class japanese people and its culture with chinese that?
i've been lookin 4 this cartoon 4 ages, its amazin, it would hav been better if it was snafu instead of mr hook, bt its still gr8!!! jst as good as any other clampett cartoon. shame they didnt use the woman at the end in the main warner bros cartoons, she would hav been very popular, possably better than tex avery's red hot riding hood.
I am Asian and I'm more than pissed, I'm Mad as Hell! Let me tell you something boys and girls: you have no idea how gruesome death can be in the hands of the Japanese during their Pacific campaign!! 'nuff sed. . .