14th July 2009, 3:36 PM
Quote:American WWII propaganda was EXTREMELY racist against the Japanese. That picture's plenty of proof, but if you need more, just compare how the Germans were treated and depicted to how the Japanese were. The Japanese were rounded up and put in concentration camps, and in the media they were depicted as animalistic savage killers who stab you in the back, look like monkeys, and are all identical.
The Germans, in contrast, were treated like comic fools. Hitler was a buffoon, not a serious threat, in American propaganda. The Japanese, or Tojo? Completely evil. We now know who was worse... but you'd never have figured that out from seeing WWII American propaganda. America was far too racist to even realize that it was acting racist, actually; even Americans opposed to racism against blacks were fully in support of the stereotypes against the Japanese.
Now, the best counter-point to that is to simply point out that the Japanese were just as bad. And indeed, it's true; Japan was very racist against Europeans before and during the war. But does that excuse either side? I'd say no.
They had anti miscegenation laws back then, Going after Germans would have been more tricky due to inter-marriage.
Canada was just as much in the wrong back then, We put the Japanese in camps too, The famous Japanese- canadian environmentalist David Suzuki grew up in a internment camp in B.C.
I suppose "Detention" is preferable to killing them,In some ways given all the anti Japanese propaganda back then , The internment camps probably protected the Japanese from the mobs of angry Canucks and Yankees.
Japan in ww2 was just as brutal and grizzly in its warfare, The rape of Nanking is one example.
Unlike the Germans the Japanese took no prisoners and didn't give a hoot about the Geneva convention.