Propaganda Reinforces Justification

Propaganda has an important function in the war process. Not only does it rally the troops and use images and mantras to depict the reasons they are fighting and sacrificing their lives, but it rallies the home front and gives every body a reason to participate in the war effort whether that means buying war bonds, rationing food, entering the industry to make war products, or creating your very own victory garden. In World War II, propaganda served another purpose, especially on the home front. Propaganda was used to help rationalize the internment of Japanese-Americans on American soil. While Germans were often the subjects of American propaganda, the Japanese were at the forefront of most propaganda seen in The United States. Most of this propaganda served to dehumanize the enemy. “When our enemy is inhuman, especially when metaphorically figured as toxic, spreading, insidious, and contaminating, it becomes a civic, even a moral duty to inhibit its’ pernicious spread” (Steuter and Wills, 2008, 38). This dehumanization of the Japanese people gave the public good reason to contain them on American soil and put them into internment camps.

Not all propaganda against the enemy was dehumanizing and evil. Many frequently seen pieces of propaganda seen after Pearl Harbor simply displayed the mantra, “Remember – December 7, 1941.” One piece shows a navy personnel working the guns, trying to take down any Japanese plane he can, aboard a ship that looks damaged and had what seems to be a dead or injured body next to him (Alston, 1943).  The propaganda works to draw from the audience’s emotions, asking them to remember the men who died trying to stop the Japanese anyway they could. It is asking you to remember the evil acts that the Japanese are capable of without warning. Remember why we are fighting to not only stop them from committing more of these murderous acts, but to avenge the one they had already committed. This type of propaganda also helped rationalize the internment of Japanese Americans. It reinforced the central idea that the Japanese were, indeed, the enemy. One form of propaganda displayed by the government that helped rationalize the internment of Japanese Americans was the film Japanese Relocation. The government film, “emphasized the cheerful cooperation of Japanese Americans as they were moved hundreds of miles away from their homes into “pioneer communities”” (Brewer, 2009, 109). It was easy to rationalize the Japanese, rather than the other Axis powers, as enemies because of the acts that had been committed, and the American military members that had been killed. It was their identity as our enemy that provoked this propaganda, thus, the internment.

Lastly, they weren’t the only ones distributing propaganda. The Japanese, whose main goal in the war was ridding the Asian countries of western colonials and colonial ideals had their own propaganda. They had a race issue with the white westerners and they distributed propaganda depicting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill depicted as monsters amongst a field of bones. They are implied to be eating the bones of their enemies. In writing on the side, in Japanese, it is translated, “Their true character is that of devils and beasts” (Unkown) The United States had not attacked them and should not have been seen as an enemy but because of their association with white westerners, they became the enemy. The Japanese used the same tactics of dehumanization to belittle the enemy. When an American citizen saw a piece of Japanese propaganda such as this one, it created visions of hate. When the enemy hates you, it makes it much easier to hate the enemy. If you happen to see propaganda depicting your American people as beasts, it helped rationalize the fact that Americans were distributing the same type of propaganda against the Japanese. The hate, dehumanization, and depiction of an enemy make it a logical choice by the American government to contain the Japanese people, in the eyes of the American public.