Draft:U.S Attitudes towards the Japanese

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U.S. Attitudes towards the Japanese[edit]

Before Pearl Harbour[edit]

Before World War II the Unites States passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which prevented Asians - with a particular emphasis on the Japanese - from immigrating to the United States. Attitudes changed during World War II.

During World War II[edit]

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, U.S magazines depicted the Japanese as 'little men', vermin, monkeys and demons. John Dower argues: the Japanese were previously seen as incompetent 'little men', so to explain their victories in the Pacific the U.S. depicted the Japanese as 'super men' with demonic powers.[1]

Ronald Takaki highlights the difference in how the U.S presented the Nazi's and the Japanese in the media. He states the American public understood that there could be 'good Germans' and ‘In the movies Germans were portrayed as tall and handsome’ [2] Takaki compares this presentation to the American attitudes towards the Japanese which depicted the 'Japs' as an entire people as the enemy.[2]

In 1942 the United States implemented a curfew for Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast. Twelve Restricted zones were created in February 1942 and on 19 February President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which allowed the U.S military to forcibly remove those who were 'deemed a threat to national security'.[3] 120,000 Japanese Americans were relocated.[4] Cases such as Hirabayashi v. United States, Yasui v. United States and Korematsu v. United States arose as individuals refused to comply with the curfew.

Japanese attitudes towards the U.S[edit]

Before Pearl Harbour[edit]

The Meiji Restoration birthed Japanese ideas of the kokutai (国体) and constitutional power. The Japanese believed that they were the superior race: the Yamato ethnicity (大和民族).[5] The Peace Preservation law (1925) upheld Japanese traditional values while containing 'foreign political influence like communism'. [6]

During World War II[edit]

In his commentary about Japanese war films, David Desser concludes that 'the utilization of a Hollywood film in a propaganda piece reveals something of Japanese like and respect for America.'[6] He suggests that Japan feared and respected the U.S. military and that the 'attack on Pearl Harbor was, after all, a pre-emptive attempt to remove the US from the Pacific War in the hopes that America would sue for peace with Japan on terms favourable to the Japanese'.[6]

During the war, Japan portrayed itself in the media as a pure race fighting against the impure Anglo-American. Contemporary magazines illustrated Japanese soldiers executing demons and savages.[1] Ronald Takaki states 'the Japanese dehumanised the enemy in what they considered a race war: they portrayed the Americans as "hairy, twisted-nosed savages."[2] The Japanese characterized the Americans as 'wild beasts, monsters, devils, and demons'.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Dower, John (2012). Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World. New York: The New Press. p. 53.
  2. ^ a b c Takaki, Ronald (1995). Hiroshima : why America dropped the atomic bomb. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. p. 72.
  3. ^ "Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese", Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks California 91320 United States: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014, retrieved 2023-12-12{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  4. ^ Piehler and Pash, G. K and S. (2010). The United States and the Second World War. New York: Fordham University Press. p. 263.
  5. ^ Ward, M. (2019). Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 22.
  6. ^ a b c Desser, David (1995). "From the Opium War to the Pacific War: Japanese Propaganda Films of World War II". Film History. 7 (1): 39.
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