Redemption for Dr. Seuss?
A version of this article originally appeared in Pacific Citizen.
Over the past couple weeks since the estate of children’s author Theodore Seuss Geisel announced they would be retiring six of his early titles from publication, the media has been awash with opinion pieces on the subject. Conservative pundits are making frenzied claims about “cancel culture” in a decidedly Trump-esque fashion that obscures the publisher’s choice in the matter. Meanwhile some elements on the left are parent-shaming those who are not “woke enough” to stop reading Dr. Seuss to their kids. It seems both sides of the debate are missing a key point.
By choosing of their own volition to withdraw these titles at this moment in our national discourse around racial equity – the Geisel estate is essentially saving his reputation so that his largely apolitical work can be admired by future generations of young readers. At face value, this is an admirable move worthy of the celebrated children’s author’s legacy, but one has to wonder how much of the decision is driven by profit?
In voluntarily removing these six titles from publication, the Geisel estate preemptively addressed any attempts to “cancel” Dr. Seuss. One would have to imagine that this was made primarily as a business decision by the estate, who could have easily predicted the possible outcome of mass outrage by certain progressive elements in our society having a negative impact on their future sales. Discontinuing these titles opens the way for progressives to continue purchasing Dr. Seuss books with a clear conscience, knowing there has been at least some measure of accountability for the harmful portrayals in his early works.
This strategy was doubly effective in incensing conservatives, who see Dr. Seuss as the latest victim to cancel culture, who are scrambling to purchase whatever remaining stock of these titles exist in the publisher’s warehouse. Publishers take books out of print all the time with little fanfare, but the fact that the Geisel estate issued a press release suggests they were actively soliciting press coverage.
Although they may have done so predicting a spike in sales, the Geisel estate probably did not envision the extent of the furor that this move would cause among many in the far right who see this as tantamount to censorship. As a result, prices of some early print editions of the six titles have been driven up to $500 or higher by various online resellers. How many people are actually willing to pay these exorbitant prices is another question entirely, but the lengths to which people are going to obtain the so-called banned books borders on absurdity.
One surprising anecdote to this effect came from a student of mine who works as a librarian. According to her, because of the prevalence of book thefts on these six titles, many public libraries have been forced to place the books into restricted holdings collections and are no longer allowed to be taken outside of the library. The assumption is that some of these book thieves are then selling them on the internet. Despite claims from some conservative pundits that the “radical left” are banning books, it is effectively these same individuals who are inciting people to steal public property, and in turn this has resulted in the additional restrictions on how these books can be accessed.
Undoubtedly the coverage on both sides of the political spectrum has been colored by powerful emotions. On a personal note, although I agree with the discontinuation of these six titles, I share a lot of the feelings expressed by those on the opposing side of the issue. I have the same fond memories of Dr. Seuss books as a young reader. I can still recite the tweetle beetle battle verse from Fox in Sox, and it brings a smile to my face even as I write this.
But I also remember my disappointment and feeling of betrayal when I first learned that Geisel drew a political cartoon titled, “The Fifth Column,” in which he depicts Japanese Americans on the West Coast lining up to pick up bundles of dynamite, implying that Japanese Americans were actively plotting sabotage in the wake of Pearl Harbor. As JACL Executive Director David Inouye noted in his column in the last issue of Pacific Citizen, this was but one of many anti-Japanese cartoons that Geisel drew during World War II.
Of course, we were at war with Japan at the time, and Geisel was a man of his times. Almost every major cartoonist during this era made anti-Japanese propaganda. What stands out about this piece in particular though, is that he is deliberately suggesting that the Japanese American community should be viewed as a military threat. Biased media coverage greatly contributed to the wartime hysteria and blatant racism that scapegoated our Japanese American community for the actions of Imperial Japan.
One man’s political cartoons can’t be blamed for all that, but they certainly contributed to the climate of distrust that ultimately led to fear and hatred of the Japanese American people, and justification for our wartime incarceration. I know some among the elder generations of Japanese Americans who actually never read or bought any Dr. Seuss books for their kids or grandkids for that very reason.
Still, I remember how much I loved reading Dr. Seuss as a child. With his creative use of rhymes, I learned things about language that made reading fun for the first time. I can't name another author that had the same impact on me as a young reader. As I think back on my early childhood reading days, one memory in particular stands out.
It was the summer of 1995 and my mother was about to travel to Japan as a chaperone for an American high school that was participating in the Students’ International Peace Conference held at Hiroshima Jogakuin, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII. The conference held special meaning for my mother since her grandmother Asako Marumoto had attended Hiroshima Jogakuin as an adolescent, before marrying my great grandfather and immigrating to California.
In the months leading up to the conference my sister and I attended many of the pre-travel classes with my mom, where they taught the high school students some basic Japanese phrases, cultural etiquette, and Japanese history. I was seven – almost eight years old at that time and while I spent most of those classes distracted by my Game Boy, I absorbed a considerable amount of the content that was being discussed there.
I don’t recall the specific moment when I learned about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, or that my hibaachan (as we called my great-grandma who was still living at that time) had lost several of her cousins in the August 6 bombing, but I do remember that summer as the first time I was really aware of the atrocities that took place during the last days of the war.
As a kid, trying to make sense of why the country of my birth held such animosity towards the country of my ancestors was difficult, although a trifle compared to the experiences of the Nisei children who learned firsthand about anti-Japanese racism during their wartime incarceration - or worse yet the children who lived through the last days of the war in Japan. Thinking back on it now, even I was surprised to realize that Dr. Seuss helped me to process this information.
At some point that summer I remember accompanying my mother to a doctor’s office so she could get some inoculations prior to her departure to Japan. My Game Boy ran out of batteries so I was stuck thumbing through the stack of children’s books in the waiting room. By then I had been reading Dr. Seuss for as long as I could remember and pushed the many titles I was familiar with aside, uninterested. Then I came upon a book of his that I had never seen before titled The Butter Battle Book.
Written during the late stage of Geisel’s career, this book was released when he was eighty years old in 1984 amidst the Cold War saber-rattling between US and Soviet Union as they engaged in a fourth decade of their global arms race. The book is essentially a parable about mutually assured destruction in which two warring peoples called the Yooks and the Zooks build increasingly ridiculous weapons because they cannot agree whether to butter their toast on the topside or bottom.
Aside from the general pacifist messaging that is consistent with Geisel’s other books written during the postwar era, there are several key passages that evoke memories of the atomic bombs. The first reference comes when the Yook soldier learns of the final weapon.
“This machine was so modern, so frightfully new, no one knew quite exactly just what it would do!”
Like some of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project, the Yook scientific community were eager to see the destructive capability of their weapon in action. A later quote indirectly references the codenames of the atomic bombs used against Japan.
“You just run to the wall like a nice little man.
Drop this bomb on the Zooks just as fast as you can.
I have ordered all Yooks to stay safe underground
While the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo is around.”
Little Boy was code for the bomb dropped August 6, 1945 on Hiroshima, while Fat Man was the bomb used against Nagasaki on August 9. The similarity to the wording of the previous verse was apparent even to seven-year-old me. In the final verse of the book, the Yook soldier who spent his life fighting the enemy stood face-to-face with a Zook soldier holding the same weapon. His grandson offers a final worried plea.
“Grandpa!” I shouted. “Be careful! Oh, gee!
Who’s going to drop it?
Will you…? Or will he…?”
“Be patient,” said Grandpa. “We’ll see. We will see…”
The book ends without resolution, indicating perhaps neither or both decided to drop the bomb. Ironically, at the time of its release The Butter Battle Book was lambasted by Reagan era conservatives who thought the pacifist message was too soft on the Soviets.
While I may have been too young to appreciate the finer points of this story at that time, reading The Butter Battle Book helped me understand how people could be so blinded by hate that they would commit unimaginable acts of savagery. Geisel’s not-so-subtle references to the atomic bomb also made me feel like he shared my belief that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never have happened. Although I acknowledge that this story is not specifically about the Japanese or Japanese American experiences during WWII, I feel it is indicative of a transformative change in his outlook.
I do not share this story to suggest that Dr. Seuss be let off the hook for his wartime propaganda, nor numerous other examples of racism found in his earlier political cartoons and six books that have been recently discontinued. I do however, think it is important we put into context the full story of this man’s work, against the political backdrop of the times he lived through.
I have a young son of my own now, who like me, is also a mixed race Japanese American. Our family history in this country is intimately connected with the pervasive anti-Japanese racism that existed before, during, and after WWII.
Will I still read Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham to him? Absolutely. When he gets a little older will I also explain the problematic nature of Geisel’s wartime political cartoons? You betcha.
Geisel was a man of his times. He made the choices he did based on the discourse in his society, which was decidedly anti-Japanese in the period when he was producing works with negative stereotypes of Japanese Americans. I don’t think that absolves him from responsibility over the impact of his work, but ultimately, I believe he learned from his past mistakes and went on to write more progressive works throughout the rest of his career.
Although Theodore Geisel never outright apologized for his wartime activities, he did acknowledge the problematic nature of his portrayal of a Chinese man in one of the now discontinued books, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. In an interview excerpted from his 1995 biography Geisel states, “I had a gentleman with a pigtail. I colored him yellow and called him a Chinaman. That's the way things were fifty years ago. In later editions I refer to him as a Chinese man. I have taken the color out of the gentleman and removed the pigtail.”
Restorative justice is a key tenet of many social justice movements. So is the belief that our actions will ultimately lead to a progressive change in our society. Although I may be a minority opinion in progressive circles on this topic, I believe it would be hypocritical to outright condemn an author who clearly grew as a person throughout his long life.
That being said, I do take issue with companies profiting from these relics of our racist past and applaud individual artists and cultural organizations who are willing to make the tough decisions to acknowledge the hurt their past works have caused. Where I am less certain, is whether the Geisel estate’s decision to eliminate these outdated and offensive portrayals from the Dr. Seuss canon was based on their sense of moral obligation, or motivated by profit.