The book references World War II.įor example, the black eagle dropping Whoville into a field of clover evokes a plane releasing a bomb when the mayor says, “the black bottomed birdie let go and we dropped / We landed so hard that our clocks have all stopped.” As the book continues, the Wickersham Brothers put Horton in a cage and threaten to dump Whoville into Beezle-Nut juice. He said in an interview, “Japan was just emerging, the people were voting for the first time, running their own lives-and the theme was obvious: ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small,’ though I don’t know how I ended up using elephants.” 3. What Seuss saw made a deep impression, and when he returned to America, he started work on Horton Hears A Who! The book is dedicated Nakamura. With the help of Mitsugi Nakamura, dean of Doshisha University in Kyoto, Seuss went to schools all over Japan and asked kids to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up. He wanted to write about the effects of the war and post-war efforts on Japanese children. In 1953, Seuss visited Japan to research an article for Life magazine. ‘Horton Hears A Who!’ reflects his change of heart about the Japanese. If we want to win, we’ve got to kill Japs.We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left.” Seuss wrote back saying, “But right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: 'Brothers!' It is a rather flabby battlecry. When readers complained about these depictions, Dr.

Among them were racist portrayals of Japanese people with slant-eyes, pig-noses, and coke-bottle glasses. Seuss, drew over 400 political cartoons for the newspaper PM. From 1941-1943, Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a.

Horton hears a who who