ts depends on the vehicle for expression.The image of the Japanese people created in American movie produced from the late the end of the war relied more on the use of linguistic descriptions and less on visual constructions of the enemy. In the year 1942 alone Hollywood produced A Prisoner of Japan, Wake Island, Menace of the Rising Sun, Remember Pearl Harbour, Danger in the Pacific, Manila Calling and Pacific Rendezvous.2 In such films where the focus is on the fighting Itself the enemy is rarely seen. Instead the character of the Japanese antagonist is inferred through the dialogue and actions of Western protagonists. These films were typical of the era in that they relied heavily on verbal cues such as ...Japs, beasts, yellow monkeys, nips or slant eyed rats..”3 to create a negative image 0f the Japanese. In the same year Twentieth Century Fox released the first film to attempt to develop a direct V idea Japanese character. Little Tokyo4 was a celluloid collage of documentary footage, scenes of Chinese and heavily made-up white actors and a paranoid plot.In the end anyone of Japanese decent was painted as a loyal subject of the Emperor and, by-efsu4t, an enemy of the West.This paper focuses or non-animated mediums such as posters, or the political cartoons used here for illustration. Such expressions due to their nature must be concise thereby distilling their topics down to the bare essentials. By doing so the visual characteristics used hold more significance as symbols and are more readily identifiable as such.Though this paper is not about any one particular source of imagery I have chosen the work of Theodore Geisle to illustrate the points discussed throughout. Perhaps better known under his pseudonym of Dr Suess, Geisle’s work spans three generations of Americans. He is strongly associated with tones of tolerance and a generally positive mentality. The works included here were all penned between 1941 and 1943 whil...
