Fireside Address Analysis

Historically, war has produced a culture of nationalist fervor, and overwhelming disdain for the opposition. In the period leading up to, and during the Second World War, there was rapidly growing anti-Japanese sentiment within the American psyche. Our people and government took aggressive actions against the Japanese, both inside and outside of our borders. Japanese people were depicted with overtly stereotyped caricatures in the media, and racial slurs were commonplace in our vernacular. These feelings, paired with the ever-rising idea of the American “Super Power”, served to strengthen the American Peoples’ resolve and heighten war-time morale. Americans wanted to do their utmost in order to defeat the Axis Powers, and defend democracy throughout …show more content…
This is evidenced by his remarks on a coal strike during a Fireside Address, as Roosevelt urged citizens to put aside their personal issues in order to provide the necessary resources for success, saying, “Every idle miner directly and individually is obstructing our war effort. We have not yet won this war. We will win this war only as we produce and deliver our total American effort on the high seas and on the battlefronts. And that requires unrelenting, uninterrupted effort here on the home front.”(Roosevelt), and later going on to imply that a strike at home could lead to deaths abroad. Roosevelt’s use of the term “American” effort is notable because it is a call to action that claims that the American workforce is the only one capable of the task and it reinforces the belief of our national “superiority”. His hope was that Americans would be compelled by their sense of national pride to work harder and be willing to survive with less. Americans, particularly women, engaged in fields of labor that were foreign to them and managed to adapt well enough to satisfy demands. There was a massive need for work and supplies and the American people did their best to satisfy those needs. World War II helped jumpstart the economy out of a depression, which along with enemies to unify against gave the population a reason to be passionately patriotic about …show more content…
After what appeared to be an unprovoked attack on American soil by Japanese military forces the American public became more intensely prejudiced towards all people of Japanese descent. “Japs” came to be viewed and portrayed as treacherous sub-humans. Japanese Americans on the West Coast, most of whom had committed no wrong, were displaced from their homes and placed in internment camps. There was such hatred and fear in regards to the Japanese people that Americans were in favor of overlooking our constitution and denying Japanese Americans due process. That intense hatred might be best demonstrated by a poll “The American Institute of Public Opinion” produced in 1942 that stated 13% of Americans were in favor of “killing off all the Japanese” (Feraru). American soldiers also mutilated dead Japanese on the battlefield, and kept trophies of body parts. The difference between how we viewed/treated Italians and Germans and how we viewed/treated the Japanese was markedly different. That difference largely stemmed from Americans harboring racial prejudices against the Japanese and viewing them more as “vermin” than as people. Any political cartoon from the time depicted the Japanese as stereotypically, and as degradingly as possible. The treachery of the Japanese that the Americans were exposed to is given visual context in