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Popular Culture Review
Internment,” points out four major stereotypes of Japanese Americans: “highly
un-American, inferior citizens, sexually aggressive, and part of an international
menace” (632). These views of Japanese Americans, in turn, dictated policies and
public opinion about them. Renteln asserts, “A deeply rooted fear of sexual congress
between the races consciously and unconsciously motivated some of the actions”
leading to internment (632).
Also in 1942, the U.S. government declared all Japanese American men
of draft age as 4-C, enemy aliens; they were forbidden to enlist in the armed forces
(Crost). However, due to the anti-discrimination measures of the Draft Act, Japanese
Americans already in Hawaii’s National Guard could stay in. Eventually, they
comprised the first all-Japanese American Nisei military unit, the 100th Infantry
Battalion. In 1943, the War Department decided to allow young Japanese American
men both in the mainland internment camps and in Hawaii to volunteer to serve,
and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was formed. The 442nd and its units
became the most highly decorated in World War II (Crost). Before the war’s end, it
would participate in eight major European campaigns (Crost) and earn: “8
Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations, and 18,143 individual decorations
including one Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 560 Silver Stars
and 28 Oak Leaf Clusters in lieu of a second Silver Star, 4,000 Bronze Stars and
1,200 Oak Leaf Clusters representing a second Bronze Star, and at least 9,486
Purple Hearts” (Brokaw 351). In a 1945 editorial, part of a series that would later
earn him a Pulitzer Prize, journalist Hodding Carter wrote about the contribution
of the 442nd, and the injustice of racial prejudice in the U.S. O f the 442nd, Carter
pointed out: “In all of the United States Army, no troops have chalked up a better
combat record” (98).
After Japan’s surrender in 1945, Japanese Americans were released from
internment camps all over the mainland United States, with the last camp closing
in 1946. The communities they spent years building and prospering in before the
war no longer welcomed them with open arms. Animosity toward Japanese
Americans continued even though Japanese Americans died fighting in Europe,
and no proof of disloyalty by any Japanese American was ever found.
Asian-Americans in Film: Japanese Portrayals
Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hollywood was already
making anti-Japanese movies such as Patria (1917) and Pearl o f the Army (1916)
(Dick). This grew worse after Pearl Harbor. As Dick notes: “Hollywood wasted no
time in implementing America’s ‘Slap the Jap’ policy. By the spring of 1942, the
racial epithets were flying fast; ‘monkey’ was the most common along with its
variants, ‘monkey people’ and ‘ringtails.’ When ‘rat’ was used, it was prefixed by
‘yellow’ and ‘slant-eyed’” (230).