During WWII, many Americans lacked basic knowledge about key aspects of the war. Most could not name the Allied countries, years of the war, or the US President at the time. Public perceptions of Japanese and Germans as enemies differed, with the Japanese often viewed as treacherous, warlike, and even subhuman. This contributed to the internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans in camps during the war.
4. December 7, 1941, “A day that will live in infamy” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Government Propaganda How did the government shape public perceptions of the Japanese? Was it necessary?
10. “ We are drowning and burning them all over the Pacific, and it is just as much pleasure to burn them as to drown them.” - Admiral William “Bull” Halsey (US Naval Commander in the Pacific): “ I wish we were fighting the Germans. They are human beings. But the Japs are like animals . . .” -An American soldier in the Pacific told John Hersey (American Journalist) “ In Europe we felt our enemies . . . were still people but in the Pacific (they were) subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about mice or cockroaches.” -WWII Journalist Ernie Pyle Anti-German propaganda was directed against the Gestapo, Hitler, the SS, etc. Anti-Japanese propaganda was directed towards all Japanese.
21. Media How did new the news media portray the Japanese?
22. “ A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched--so a Japanese-American, born of Japanese parents, grows up to be a Japanese not an American.” -Los Angeles Times
32. Internment Camps General John DeWitt Army General in charge of “evacuation” and Interment Camps 1943 stated: “the Japs must be wiped off the face of the earth.” http://www.archive.org/details/Japanese1943 http://www.archive.org/details/Challeng1944
36. Combat How did Japanese Americans contribute to the US war effort? What was the nature of combat between the US and Japanese?
37. “… the Japanese made a perfect enemy. They has so many characteristics that and American Marine could hate. Physically, they were small, a strange color and, by some standards unattractive…Marines did not consider that they were killing men. They were wiping out dirty animals.” -US Marine LIFE Magazine, May 22,1944 Caption: Arizona war worker write her boyfriend a thank-you note for the Jap skull sent to her. An American officer told Charles Lindbergh in 1944 that he had seen Japanese bodies with ears and noses cut off: “ Our boys cut them off to show their friends in fun, or to dry and take back to the United States when they go. We found one Marine with a Japanese head. He was trying to get the ants to clean the flesh off the skull, but the odor got so bad we had to take it away from him.” A Marine Corps veteran recorded in his memoirs the horrific scene of another Marine extracting gold teeth from the jaw of a wounded but still struggling Japanese, a task which he had attempted to facilitate by slashing the victim’s cheeks from ear to ear and kneeling on his chin.
38. Japanese-Americans at War Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were nisei and sansei. The rest were issei (immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship). Japanese Americans, in Hawaii comprised 1/3 of the population. Because they were essential to in keeping the economy and naval bases operating, very few were interned (approx. 1%).
41. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - Mr. Yunioshi Poster outside of a restaurant in Guangzhou, China. Mainly Negative View of Japan – 2010 (BBC) 7% Japan 11% United States 16% United Kingdom 31% Italy 34% Germany 35% Turkey 375 France 47% China
Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991 - Because of the fame of his children's books (and because we often misunderstand these books) and because his political cartoons have remained largely unknown, we do not think of Dr. Seuss as a political cartoonist. But for two years, 1941-1943, he was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he drew over 400 editorial cartoons. Last slide NOT Seuss.
Artist Thomas Hart Benton believed that it was the artist`s role either to fight or to "bring the bloody actual realities of this war home to the American people." In a series of eight paintings, Benton portrayed the violence and barbarity of fascism. "The Sowers" shows the enemy as bulky, brutish monsters tossing human skulls onto the ground. The series was title, The Year of Peril, http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/benton/benton1.htm
People took to making their own propaganda, posting it and even profiting from it.
The “Fifth Column” Lippman = Chomsky’s antithesis
This World War II photograph shows a Japanese American family at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, located in northwest Wyoming. During the war, the government forced West Coast Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans to leave their homes and move to internment camps. A small percentage of Oregon’s roughly 4,000 Japanese went to Heart Mountain, where more than 10,000 were detained. Manzanar In the Pacific Northwest, existing hostility against Japanese people increased after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The government declared that immigrant Japanese — issei — were “enemy aliens” and many issei men were detained by the FBI. People were forced to sell their property at below-value prices and to abandon businesses.
For practical reasons, in Hawaii, Japanese Americans were allowed to help in construction projects for the war effort. This lead to more involvement and eventually to segregated military divisions like the 442 nd . The Japanese American soldiers wre forced to take loyalty oaths,
![[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/anti-japanesesentimentandpropaganda-110418125616-phpapp02/85/Anti-Japanese-Sentiment-and-Propaganda-in-WWII-1-320.jpg)
