ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to add the understanding of American anti-Asian prejudice and how it relates to sensory experiences of Second World War, in personnel training and combat interactions with the Japanese enemy. It also explores the interplay between different senses and their relationship to embodiment. Odour results from 'an interaction between a chemical stimulus and an olfactory receptor system'. The relationship between Japanese and American soldiers in the Pacific during the Second World War may be characterized, in many instances, by deep-seated racial stereotyping, extreme disrespect and often unsanctioned levels of interpersonal violence including mutilation of human remains. Many Pacific islanders, employed as guides by the US Army, were claimed by the latter to have almost a supernatural ability to 'sniff out' the enemy. The clear propaganda value obtained from newspaper reports of 'smelling the enemy', as described above, blurs the boundaries between 'race', ethnicity and corporeality, reified in a militarized and highly pressured cultural context.
