Over Here, Over There

 Introduction   |   Perception of the Enemy   |   News of the War  |   Keeping in Contact   |   Re-entry into the Community   |   Notes   |   Main Index

The government fueled these basic emotions by focusing its public relations campaign against the evil person of Hitler. Beginning in the late 1930s, "Hitler the Führer" was well known in the United States, thus, the government did not have to use much imagination in its propaganda. War ads and posters feature Hitler prominently and encourage individuals at home to fight against his government. Nazi soldiers are depicted as machine-like, wicked and cruel.

However, there is little to no mention of "Germans" or the German people in the government propaganda. Gordon Forsberg, who lived in the Village at the time of the war recalls, "You know, it was a case of Hitler being a, you know…he was just a wacko, and he just had all the people all buffaloed and stymied." It seems that at least some Americans believed that fundamentally the German people were not evil, but rather, that a powerful leadership had overrun them.

The movie industry, which was also censored by the government, also made a tacit distinction between the two enemies. (2) In nearly every war movie at least one good German was introduced, as opposed to the Nazis, while there was rarely a "good Japanese" depicted. However, as the war dragged on movies and novels began to portray Germans as more barbaric and heartless than Americans. In his popular 1945 novel Apartment in Athens, Glenway Wescott wrote that all Germans believed themselves to be supermen and described even civilian cruelties. (3)

In stark contrast to those veterans whom we interviewed who fought in the Pacific, veterans who fought in Germany have a fond recollection of the people and the land. Edward Hult remembers, "I married a German girl…it was really a shame to see what was going on in Germany, because it was a beautiful country…it's unbelievable - the beautiful countries, but that's the way it was." The battles in Europe were fierce and bloody, but the fight was always against a regime and not a people.

It may have been inevitable that Americans would perceive the enemy of Japan differently from the German enemy because Japan attacked American soil. Wesley Holm exemplifies this well, "I didn't have the hatred of the Germans I did for the Japanese. I positively hated the Japanese 'cause they attacked us." However, the government exploited existing racism towards Asians and encouraged it further with anti-Japanese propaganda.

The attack on Pearl Harbor came as a complete and total shock for most Americans, including every Villager whom we interviewed. "Well, everybody was caught off guard….It was just, 'wow'. You know, what the? Where'd this come from?" remembers Forsberg. Tony Butkus recalls the anger he and many other Americans felt after December 7th: "That was very sneaky, you know, to pull that off. Really got your blood boiling." Penny Copeland, a child living in the Village at the time of the war noted, "Well everyone was like 'my gosh how sneaky!' How sneaky they all were." "Japan's aggression…stirred the deepest recess of white supremacism and provoked a response bordering on the apocalyptic." (footnote) Due in part to the bombing on American soil, many Americans developed a belief that all Japanese were atrocious, sub-humans.

In the case of Japan, there was no known figure, such as Adolf Hitler, that the government could depict as the epitome of evil and use to gain support for the war effort. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki were not well known before or during the War. The government focused its efforts on portraying all Japanese as "sneaky" and suggested that the enemy was all Japanese individuals (even Japanese-Americans), not just an evil Japanese government. "In depicting the Axis triumvirate political cartoonists routinely gave the German enemy Hitler's face and the Italian enemy Mussolini's, but they rendered the Japanese as plain, homogeneous 'Japanese' creatures: short, round faced, bucktoothed and slant-eyed." (4) Although Washington officially denied being involved in a race war, "the War Production Board approved an advertisement published in 1943 that called for the extermination of all Japanese rats." (5)

The American government also released numerous accounts of extreme brutality by the Japanese, not necessarily Japanese soldiers, in combat. Reports of the suicide bombings by Kamikaze pilots furthered this maniacal, sub-human stereotype. Although these reports may have been accurate, by failing to make a distinction between the army of Japan and the citizenry of Japan both in military reports and in the media in general, the public was continuously fed racist images and messages.

However, there were some individuals who were able to see through the racialization of the war and did not believe that all Japanese, particularly Japanese Americans, were to blame for the War. "But I thought it was so terrible that just because they were Japanese how they had to suffer for the mistake of someone else who was Japanese. It covered over to everybody because they were Japanese, they all had to suffer," believed Grace Butkus about the forced internment of Japanese-Americans.

No veteran who fought in the Pacific theater with whom we spoke had any positive memories of the people, as was the case with Germany. Veterans themselves speak in terms of the Japanese population and not in terms of the Japanese army. "See we were fighting against the Japs, they were very sneaky," remembers Ed Steele. Holm says, "I ended up in Japan…and I don't know how many people got killed because of those Japs. And they were mean. They were a mean people."

It is apparent, even in our small sample of the Village residents that the government was successful in magnifying the preexisting anti-Asian prejudices within the United States and transforming them into true hatred. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor Allan Nevins, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian, observed, "probably in all our history, no foe has ever been so detested as were the Japanese." (6) This discrimination fueled support for the war both at home and abroad.