WWIITanks for the memories....

voices of the pastthe Homefront

Depicting the Enemy

This cover of the December, 1942, issue of Collier’’s magazine commemorated the first anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The vampire-bat portrayal of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo indicates one way in which American popular media and war propaganda presented the Japanese. Unlike images of the European enemy, the Japanese were depicted as vicious animals, most often taking the form of apes or parasitic insects. The same racial stereotypes were also applied to Japanese living in America. Suspecting their loyalty, the U.S. government rounded up all Japanese Americans living on the west coast—citizens and non-citizens alike—and transported them to detention centers in the West. Forced to abandon their homes, jobs, and businesses, Japanese Americans remained detained in camps for the duration of the war.

How to tell a Jap from the ChineseDuring World War II, Chinese Americans, who had often been lumped together with other Asians and even called “Japs,” worried that anti-Japanese hatred would be directed at them. The U.S. alliance with China forced Americans to differentiate between Japanese and Chinese, although it did not abolish racial stereotypes Americans held about either group. These three panels from the Pocket Guide to China, a U.S. Army pamphlet distributed to soldiers and illustrated by cartoonist Milton Caniff show how outrageous racial stereotypes were used to distinguish between Asian friend and foe in official wartime publications.