During WW2 there needed to be propaganda to keep American citizens in line and to never deny the purpose of the war. If too many people were against something the country is doing, then the war may have been lost. We saw in a presentation from class many different kinds of propaganda targeting Japanese and Germans. I noticed and I believe many others have noticed the difference between the two kinds of propaganda. The one targeting the Japanese did their very best to make them seem inhuman and animalistic, however ones targeting Germans, they targeted the idea of Nazism. I believe there are many reasons behind this subtle difference. We learned in class that the Japanese have the strategy that they would rather die than surrender, based off of the ancient code of the samurai, who when they were dishonored they would commit seppuku, a form of suicide where they slash themselves across the stomach with their katana. To Americans, this is seen as insane, thus making it easier to propagate the idea that they are less than human. Another reason why it was easier to dehumanize Japanese people was because of physical appearance. It is a known fact that a person of European descent and a person of Asian descent look different. In the picture below, we see huge exaggerations of features that are common in Asian people. A real picture of Hideki Tojo, the leader of Imperial Japan, then a propaganda poster representing him.
However, in propaganda attacking Germans, the main point of propaganda posters is to attack Nazism instead of being of German ethnicity. This could be because there are in fact a lot of Americans that immigrated from Germany, and exaggerated features of people from the same race as yourself are more difficult to appeal. For example, we have this poster.
I agree with your argument that propaganda was used to keep the purpose of the war present in Americans minds. By dehumanizing the Japanese, it made Americans feel that if the Japanese won the war, they would have lost to something lesser than them. By depicting the Nazi government in a evil way, Americans thought that if the Nazis won the war, the world would not be run correctly.
ReplyDeleteWhat still shocks me the most was that American Japanese were moved to camps simply for their racial background. So called it was for their well being and to not be hurt by others, when really they were making a way to dehumanize the Japanese soldiers. This in turn would make killing Japanese easier for the American soldiers.
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