ANTI-JAPANESE PROPAGANDA IN WWII: Racism Takes an Uglier Turn
Origins: The Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril was a color metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with Chinese immigrants as coolie slaves or laborers to the United States. It was later associated with the Japanese during the mid-20th century, due to Japanese military expansion, and eventually extended to all Asians of East and Southeast Asian descent. The term refers to the skin color of East Asians, the fear that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages and standards of living, and the fear that they would eventually take over and destroy western civilization, replacing it with their ways of life and values.
The Yellow Peril first became a major issue in the United States in California in the 1870s when white working-class laborers, fearful of losing their jobs amidst an economic decline, discriminated against the "filthy yellow hordes" from Asia, leading to the national Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which not only prohibited immigration from China but forbade legal residents from becoming citizens. According to the famed orator of the time, Horace Greeley, "The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order." This idea of an "Asian menace" was later applied to the Japanese, particularly after Japan's victory over a Western power, Russia, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 after it had faced more than a half-century of Western imperialism. According to historian John Dower, "the vision of the menace from the East was always more racial rather than national. It derived not from concern with any one country or people in particular, but from a vague and ominous sense of the vast, faceless, nameless yellow horde: the rising tide, indeed, of color." This feeling of impending doom from the East led to the 1917 Immigration Restriction Act and the National Origins Act of 1924-two acts that prevented nearly all Asian immigrants from legally entering the United States and prohibited immigrants already in the United States from attaining citizenship.
The Yellow Peril first became a major issue in the United States in California in the 1870s when white working-class laborers, fearful of losing their jobs amidst an economic decline, discriminated against the "filthy yellow hordes" from Asia, leading to the national Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which not only prohibited immigration from China but forbade legal residents from becoming citizens. According to the famed orator of the time, Horace Greeley, "The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order." This idea of an "Asian menace" was later applied to the Japanese, particularly after Japan's victory over a Western power, Russia, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 after it had faced more than a half-century of Western imperialism. According to historian John Dower, "the vision of the menace from the East was always more racial rather than national. It derived not from concern with any one country or people in particular, but from a vague and ominous sense of the vast, faceless, nameless yellow horde: the rising tide, indeed, of color." This feeling of impending doom from the East led to the 1917 Immigration Restriction Act and the National Origins Act of 1924-two acts that prevented nearly all Asian immigrants from legally entering the United States and prohibited immigrants already in the United States from attaining citizenship.
One of the ways that Chinese were discriminated against was by portraying them in images as barbaric and threatening. The claw-like hand became the most common stereotype of the "evil" Chinese. Click any image for a larger version and captions.
The Insidious Nature of Chinese Women: The "Dragon Lady" Image
A Dragon Lady is usually a stereotype of East Asian women as strong, deceitful, domineering or mysterious. The term's origin and usage is Western, not Chinese. Inspired by the early characters played by actress Anna May Wong, the term was coined from the villain in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates. The term has been applied to powerful Asian women and, racially, to a number of Asian film actresses. Today, "Dragon Lady" is often applied anachronistically to refer to persons who lived before the term became part of American slang in the 1930s. It has also been used to refer to any powerful but prickly woman, usually in a derogatory fashion.
Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. The story line placed a young, American aviator in China to combat the local pirate gangs. Most notable of the strip's characters was the famed femme fatale, the Dragon Lady, who started as an enemy and later, during the war, became an ally.
WWII and the Racism of Anti-Japanese Propaganda
The fear of the Yellow Peril began again immediately after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, leading the United States to enter into War and spurring strong anti-Japanese sentiment. As America entered the War, it was still a largely racist country. The South was still strictly segregated with black Americans denied civil rights and prevented from voting. And, America fought the War with a segregated military, including all-black and all-Japanese-American divisions (generally commanded by white officers).
The anti-Japanese prejudice of the time was often intense and sharply reflected in blatantly racist war propaganda. Popular imagery of the time, particularly through political cartoons and propaganda posters, debased the Japanese as subhuman apes and gorillas, treacherous in nature, morally corrupt and mentally and physically lesser than white Americans. Japanese conduct during the war did little to quell this anti-Japanese sentiment. Fanning the flames of outrage were atrocities committed on civilian populations in China, Korea and elsewhere as well as the treatment American and other prisoners of war, including the murder of POWs, the use of POWs as slave labor for Japanese industries, the Bataan Death March, and numerous other actions being reported regularly by international news sources and through first-hand accounts.
This viewpoint of the Japanese as subhuman and treacherous ultimately led to justification for such actions as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and fueled the movement towards forcibly relocating Japanese Americans to internment camps through Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19th, 1942. An estimated 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans from the West Coast were interned regardless of their attitude to the US or Japan. They were held for the duration of the war and, in many cases, returned home to find their property, farms, businesses, and other possessions had been sold or taken over by the local, non-Japanese-American population.
The anti-Japanese prejudice of the time was often intense and sharply reflected in blatantly racist war propaganda. Popular imagery of the time, particularly through political cartoons and propaganda posters, debased the Japanese as subhuman apes and gorillas, treacherous in nature, morally corrupt and mentally and physically lesser than white Americans. Japanese conduct during the war did little to quell this anti-Japanese sentiment. Fanning the flames of outrage were atrocities committed on civilian populations in China, Korea and elsewhere as well as the treatment American and other prisoners of war, including the murder of POWs, the use of POWs as slave labor for Japanese industries, the Bataan Death March, and numerous other actions being reported regularly by international news sources and through first-hand accounts.
This viewpoint of the Japanese as subhuman and treacherous ultimately led to justification for such actions as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and fueled the movement towards forcibly relocating Japanese Americans to internment camps through Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19th, 1942. An estimated 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans from the West Coast were interned regardless of their attitude to the US or Japan. They were held for the duration of the war and, in many cases, returned home to find their property, farms, businesses, and other possessions had been sold or taken over by the local, non-Japanese-American population.
The images below depict the exaggerated characteristics typically associated with the Japanese during WWII. The last four are from a series of posters showing how Americans at home may inadvertently aid the enemy. These are particularly virulent in their depictions of an enemy who isn't even human.
Even the later beloved children's book author, Dr. Seuss, turned his editorial cartooning skills to the vicious stereotyping of the Japanese. Notice particularly how his depiction, and others in this group, don't characterize the Germans in the same way.
More "realistic" interpretations still show the enemy as vicious, much like the demonization of the Germans during WWI. The term "Jap" was ubiquitous throughout the war.
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The final image on this page is from an anti-Japanese Fortune magazine spread from early in the war. The caption at the bottom even explains the use of stereotyping to depict the Japanese people. It reads:
All the Japanese may not always look like this, but exaggeration is at all times a weapon in the caricaturists's hands. Covarrubias [the artist] knows the Japanese, and thus sees the face of the enemy as he turns—the toothy soldier, capitalist, and commercial man, the tight-lipped officers, the fanatical priest, the doll-like geisha, the submissive peasant and his wife, who breed the soldiers who fill up the army that really runs Japan and the God Emperor. |