Sentiments of the Media
Propaganda to support the Japanese Internment Camps
This video was produced by the U.S. Government to explain their decision to forcibly intern thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent. They "justified" their actions, claimed to place them in comfortable quarters, and made the Japanese appear happy and willing to oblige. It's an amazing/horrific display of U.S. Government propaganda.
No stone was left unturned; Propaganda filtered into every area of media, including cartoons. This Popeye cartoon is now banned in the U.S. There were many such cartoons that portrayed the Japanese as odd, barbaric individuals who were dangerous and not to be trusted, such as this cartoon by Looney Tunes called "Tokio Jokio"
Sentiments of (some) Caucasian U.S. citizens
The propaganda helped to spread the anti-Japanese sentiments in the U.S.. These sentiments, in turn, also encouraged the propaganda and negative portraits of Japanese everywhere.
This is seen in a memo by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, written on Feb 2, 1942. He explains the reasoning behind the evacuation by stating that, "The necessity for mass evacuation is based primarily upon public and political pressure rather than on factual data. Public hysteria and in some instances, the comments of the press and radio announcers, have resulted in a tremendous amount of pressure being brought to bear on Governor Olson and Earl Warren, Attorney General of the State, and on the military authorities." He admitted that there was no evidence against Japanese-Americans but still promoted their relocation. An interesting collection of conversations, meetings, interviews, and memos made by those in political seats can be found here.
There is much evidence for this public hysteria such as in the picture shown above. While some white americans argued for equal treatment of Japanese-Americans, there were many who feared those of Japanese decent and cruelly treated them as outcasts. To hear about Japanese-American feelings on these sentiments go to Personal Experiences.
