Slide 5 was me when I finally started looking into Harry Potter's treatment of Asian people. I never read HP, I've always been annoyed by it and then the annoyance was justified when JKR unmasked as an outright racist queerphobe. But back on topic, I'm mad that not only is the singular Asian magic school in Japan, it's on a tiny island right next to Iwo Jima. The entirety of Iwo Jima is considered a WWII memorial because of the sheer bloodbath that happened on that island because of the American push into the Pacific Theater and their allyship with local Filipino populations. Among the horrors committed were the mass deployment (every American platoon had one) of flamethrowers to clear out Japanese hiding spots, many of which were interconnected like anthills and were cemented over to prevent more soldiers from emerging. It's debated whether or not the battles were a scare tactic by American forces to turn Iwo Jima into a show of strength, especially since the image of soldiers pushing up an American flag is one of the most famous from WWII. After the war ended, Iwo Jima was 'gifted' back to Japan by the US but the people who used to live there were never allowed back. My dad is retired military who researched Iwo Jima as part of our history as Filipinos and it upsets me to no end that there's a super secret magic school for kids right next to Iwo Jima as the only option for magic Asian kids, along with conflating every Asian ethnicity as one. I know HP plays around with dark fantasy concepts but this is like building an art school besides an extermination camp. I don't know how British people are taught about world history but I can't imagine looking at Iwo Jima and thinking it's the singular best option to put a school for every Asian child ever.
As a (former) kid who came up through the British state school system, this is the first I've heard about Iwo Jima. When we covered WW2 in school the focus was almost entirely on the European theatre, with a bit of North Africa thrown in too because the conflict there was heavily tied in with the European theatre. My memory of what we were taught about the Asian theatre basically can be summed up as Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
I also came up through the schools at least a decade after rowling, so I can't imagine her education being more detailed on the non-European portions of WW2. TO BE CLEAR, I am absolutely not defending her ignorance here - she wrote those books as an adult and absolutely should have done her research and exercised even a little common sense/compassion - I'm just explaining that the UK has an incredibly Euro-(and even more particularly Anglo)-centric view of WW2 in almost all discussions of it
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u/FriedChickenCheezits 5h ago
Slide 5 was me when I finally started looking into Harry Potter's treatment of Asian people. I never read HP, I've always been annoyed by it and then the annoyance was justified when JKR unmasked as an outright racist queerphobe. But back on topic, I'm mad that not only is the singular Asian magic school in Japan, it's on a tiny island right next to Iwo Jima. The entirety of Iwo Jima is considered a WWII memorial because of the sheer bloodbath that happened on that island because of the American push into the Pacific Theater and their allyship with local Filipino populations. Among the horrors committed were the mass deployment (every American platoon had one) of flamethrowers to clear out Japanese hiding spots, many of which were interconnected like anthills and were cemented over to prevent more soldiers from emerging. It's debated whether or not the battles were a scare tactic by American forces to turn Iwo Jima into a show of strength, especially since the image of soldiers pushing up an American flag is one of the most famous from WWII. After the war ended, Iwo Jima was 'gifted' back to Japan by the US but the people who used to live there were never allowed back. My dad is retired military who researched Iwo Jima as part of our history as Filipinos and it upsets me to no end that there's a super secret magic school for kids right next to Iwo Jima as the only option for magic Asian kids, along with conflating every Asian ethnicity as one. I know HP plays around with dark fantasy concepts but this is like building an art school besides an extermination camp. I don't know how British people are taught about world history but I can't imagine looking at Iwo Jima and thinking it's the singular best option to put a school for every Asian child ever.