Japanese Americans During Ww2 Essay

People fear what they don’t understand and this fear can lead to an intense hatred that can convince others to believe them. During World War II many people began to believe the wartime propaganda convincing themselves that the Japanese were animals instead of people. The American people began to believe the Japanese race was the “enemy” instead of the Axis powers. They had even convinced our own government to imprison its own citizens because of their race instead of their ideals. The internment of Japanese Americans encouraged racism in the U.S. because the wartime hysteria influenced the American people to think that the Japanese were the “enemy” and the government imprisoned them even though they were innocent. Prior to World War II Japanese immigrants moved to America to build better lives. Initially, they were a source for inexpensive labor and received …show more content…
This made it easy for racists to release wave after wave of propaganda posters belittling the Japanese people. The hysteria caused by the bombing of Pearl Harbor allowed people to be easily swayed by the ideas that were being impressed on the posters. Hannah Miles put it best when she stated in her article “WWII Propaganda: The Influence of Racism” that the posters “attacked the entire Japanese race by linking their physical attributes to animalism and unintelligence” (Miles 3). Miles added “the anger, fear, and contempt felt toward the barbaric Japanese figures in propaganda images led Anglo Americans to treat Japanese Americans as if they were actually barbarians” (Miles 7). The pressure caused by the propaganda was the push that sent the American people overboard, igniting the tinder to the bonfire of hatred and implanting the idea that the discrimination of the Japanese was the right thing to do. The hotbed of emotion justified President Roosevelt passing Executive Order 9066, which allowed the imprisonment of Japanese