Popeye also took time out from battling Sinbad and other nemeses to take on the Japanese. © King Features Prods.

Then there's the matter of Popeye, gaily singing the title song to "You're a Sap, Mr. Jap" (1942) early in the film, before the Japanese are even spotted. Or Bugs Bunny, distributing grenades disguised as "Good Rumor" ice cream bars to his Japanese foes in "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" (1944). "Here's yours, bowlegs!" laughs the rabbit. "Here's one for you, monkey-face!" "Here y'are, slant-eyes!" Are these really two of our favorite, most revered cartoon characters mouthing such lines? What must be going on in Bug's head as he slings his insults with such gusto? How will Popeye feel after the war is over, when he becomes an international symbol of American good will?

At this point, the reader surely knows that Popeye and Bugs and everyone else who dehumanized the Japanese can only say what the writer and director wish them to. It seemed to be fine for Tedd Pierce and Friz Freleng to put such words in Bug's mouth, or for Jim Tyer and Carl Meyer to do the same for Popeye. Don Christensen was most likely the writer who portrayed the Japanese in "Tokio Jokio" to be so offensive that skunks donned gas masks in their proximity. In defense of these artisans working in the 1940s, fine it was. As mentioned earlier, this was a time when countless persons of Japanese ancestry -- upstanding and loyal Americans -- were dispossessed, rounded up without charges, branded as potential traitors, and imprisoned in what could only be called concentration camps ("War Relocation Camps" was the American euphemism).

Germans and Italians roamed freely throughout the nation. No detention camps went up within the various "Germantowns" and "Little Italys" found nestled in many urban areas, although to be fair there were some Italian and German-American detainees. Still, only the racially different Japanese (including notable Hanna-Barbera character designer Iwao Takamoto) endured these indignities to such an extreme degree, and this only 79 years after America had set another race free from slavery. There would be no post-war apology to Japanese Americans until 1988.

In the disclaimer to Popeye the Sailor, Volume Three, Warner Bros. is careful to state that "these depictions were wrong then and are wrong today." That is a literal fact, but no disclaimer can account for the visceral reactions these cartoons summon up in me. They seem to be a startling aberration in the flow of theatrical animation; the severed paw of a rat found bobbing in your bowl of sugary cereal and milk. These are cartoons made with intentional malice, sullied with the spirit of blatant racism, and produced with an air of confidence that these shorts constituted perfectly acceptable entertainment for millions.

Bugs Bunny over the years has grown, as the tolerance level for racist and cruel cartoons has deflated. Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library. © A.M.P.A.S.

Nothing should be easier for me, a student of American period culture, to step back and objectively analyze cartoons such as "Tokio Jokio" as artifacts of a particular era, artifacts that carried a specific sort of psychological resonance with society. Yet, somehow, I am never quite able to do so. I have never been entirely comfortable with the racist imagery that stretches back to the earliest days of animation, but I can at least understand its antecedents and the means by which it was adapted into the universe of American entertainment. I can understand how racial imagery was seen as harmless until cultural standards changed in accordance with civil rights and societal enlightenment. I do not by any means condone it, but I can comprehend the why and how of its existence.

The anti-Japanese cartoons of WWII, however, are a different matter. True, there were unflattering ethnic depictions of Asians before Pearl Harbor, but these were par for the course in the days of ethnically-insensitive cartoons. Then, for three years, the Japanese were singled out for unmatched vituperation by the Hollywood animation studios. After the war, their likes were never seen again. Therefore, these cartoons had one purpose and one purpose only: to promote ridicule, hatred and racism against an Asian foe. They are the animated equivalent of the detention camps, and every bit as reprehensible.

Perhaps some of my readers may consider this an overreaction on my part. Perhaps others believe that the Japanese, especially after their perfidious attack on Pearl Harbor and their atrocities in China and the Philippines, had it coming. Still others may consider, on a subjective moral scale, that racial depictions of African-Americans was much worse, more pervasive and lasted far longer. I won't argue with them. However, as a critic and student of American animation, it sometimes behooves me to take a moral stand and call these cartoons what I feel they truly are, whether they have enduring historical value or not.

As animation spreads as an art form that can be (and is) increasingly produced by the American public, I have begun to harbor the fear that hate mongers will turn animation to dark and unsavory ends. White supremacists and neo-Nazis already have videos, metal music recordings, websites and blogs aplenty and there is no shortage of crackpots, fringe elements and personality-disordered miscreants lurking around in society. Most of their efforts at animation will be crude, sophomoric and laughable, but we can be thankful for at least one thing: Unlike the racist cartoons of WWII, they won't be sanctioned by Hollywood.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.