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According to Gilmore, propaganda “...is designed to persuade the target audience to respond to a particular issue or idea either favorably or unfavorably.”l In the case of a war the desired response is to produce an effective and productive desire to win. This was achieved in two ways. First, the enemy is devalued; “they” are presented as something less worthy than “us.” Faults are exaggerated, actions are interpreted with a suspicious eye and the morality and/or cultural value of the target group is slandered. The enemy becomes someone to be feared, resisted at all cost and possibly deserving of total destruction. Secondly the esteem of the group producing the propaganda is raised. War is presented in terms of doing one’s duty as a member of a morally superior society. If ‘they’ are treacherous then ‘we’ are honest; if ‘they’ are inferior’ then ‘we’ are superior, and so on… The two approaches are directly proportional to one another. The more depraved an enemy the greater the moral standing of those who try to annihilate them. If ‘they’ are uncivilised then ‘we’ must be more civilised by default, or so the thinking goes. The balance between devaluing the enemy and empowering one’s own population says as much about how the propagandising body’s views as how it views the enemy. The former is often drawn by inference from the latter. Propaganda takes many forms and it is essential to understand the nature of the medium chosen to properly derive the intended message. In terms of expression each depiction of the other contains a mixture of verbal, graphic and contextual elements. The degree to which each of these elements exists 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-čefsu4t, 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 while Geisle served as chief editorial cartoonist with PM Magazine in New York. Overall the opinions put across in his cartoons of this time present themselves as being informed and rational. They are consistent with images of their time in terms of methods used to make their point. During this time he covered themes ranging from the internal debate over the US isolationist policy, the dangers represented by the Axis powers to the need to reevaluate the average American’s racial views as in Image 1. That his political commentary during the war should include such blatant stereotyping of the Japanese emphasises the degree to which racial prejudices existed throughout the American perspective and qualify Geisle’s work as representative of that perspective. The characteristics that were used to describe the Japanese were not creations of Pacific War. Western travel literature is rife with observations of physical differences between people of Eastern and Western decent. The most notable difference lent its name to the late nineteenth century fears of the “Yellow Peril.” Not only are the Japanese (and indeed most all Asians) set apart by the colour of their skin, but the colour yellow may hold an association with unhealthy-ness in the Western mind. But skin colour was not the only attribute used to describe the Japanese. How the general American public perceived the Japanese is aptly demonstrated by Image. The large glasses suggest a myopic sense of vision preventing the Japanese from seeing the world in Western (i.e. superior) terms. Subject to faulty vision the Japanese could not fully develop an accurate and true understanding of the reality as the Americans understood it. Further more, what flawed concepts of the world the Japanese did hold were concealed from the West by unchanging facial expression? The squinting eyes and buck-toothed smile were constant. They were considered an act of dishonesty, a mask behind which the Japanese chose to hide. Behind this mask lay a mentality the West could not fully perceive nor begin to understand. It was a face that did not reflect internal sentiment and therefore one that could not be trusted. In short, the Japanese could not be taken at face value as is aptly demonstrated in Image 3. The stereotypical expression and western dress of Japan hide a potential act of treachery that can only be surmised by assessing the facts external to Japan in the form of the disguised serpent. The characteristics discussed so far remained fairly constant throughout war. In a large way they seem to be little more than comic, school-boy style ridicule of perceived physical imperfections. Possibly the most telling factor of American representations is the degree to which the Japanese people were presented as one, monolithic homogenous group. To apply a one-size-fits-all label to a target group is a standard propaganda treatment. What is most notable is the degree to which this was pushed on the Japanese by the American viewpoint. The Japanese people are shown to the American public as a homogenous race made up not of individuals but of” photographic prints off the same negative.”5 It is helpful to compare how various countries are presented. The characters who appear in political cartoons such as Suess’ are not individuals but icons. The issue of homogeneity is less about the fact that certain qualities are exaggerated to create a representative image and more about how and to whom that image is applied. When dealing with international issues the most consistent portrayal of the US is that of a stylised American eagle. But when this is set in contrast to works addressing matters internal to the US, a host of characters are introduced to delineate various American viewpoints. The conflict displayed over internal matters suggests that the eagle only represented one viewpoint, not the entire spectrum. (Geisle like most other artists, made much use of the trademark moustache, hair wide eyes that were widely associated with Hitler. But this image was used to represent the Nazis,* not the German race. The people of Germany were to be capable of making choices between right and wrong. Granted that the war had been brought on by an error in their judgment, but this could be rectified by a mature race. It was only the Nazi leadership which deserved to die. Japan is presented in the caricatured physical traits discussed at the beginning of this paper. This image may resemble General Tojo, but then it is also intended to resemble every Japanese person. This is emphasized by Images 4 and 5. The former shows the US eagle confronted by an army of stereotyped replicants. Each individual soldier may be much smaller in comparison but the US is greatly outnumbered. Such images draw heavily on the dormant fear of a “Yellow Peril.” In the second image the definition of things Japanese is expanded to include Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. Presented as a Fifth Column this attitude was so widely accepted as to allow for the internment of over 100,000 American citizens Japanese decent. The elements used to indicate Japan — the eyes, teeth, smile — are all physiological. This would suggest that the failings denote a deep flaw not only in the individual person, but in the entire Japanese race. As the defects are presented as a part of the Japanese nature then they must be irreversible. If the nature of the Japanese cannot be changed then they must be removed as a whole. But there were qualities whose values shifted according to circumstance and which carried far more damning undertones. The first theme, that of stature, was less about the physical size of the average Japanese person and more about making direct inferences of moral lacking. By presenting the Japanese soldier as something less than human the moral obstacles of murder where lessened.6 In Western eyes Japan simply did not measure up. It had not produced the cultural or technological achievements that distinguished a civilised people by Western standards. Cultural inferiority implied a moral inferiority. This suggested that Japan was, at best, a people whose development had been stunted by their own shortcomings — a country of children. At the worst, they were a race of sub-humans for whom there was no hope of reprieve or betterment. The idea of a stunted or non-existent civility was most often expressed through the use of one of two metaphors. One portrayed Japan as a child and the other as a monkey or ape. The Japanese, particularly during the period leading up to the Pacific War, were portrayed as a small people of small achievement and small moral standing. At times it could be expressed in quite literal terms. A 1944 propaganda report stated that, “Some observers claim there would have been no Pearl Harbor had the Japanese been three inches taller.” This report would go on to claim that “The [Japanese] people, tiny in stature, seem to play at living.”7 The crime here is not being physically smaller than others, but being culturally immature. Showing Japan as a child was most common before war was declared with the US as in Image 6. The metaphor need ‘j not be so obvious. In Image 7 ~ Japan may not be presented as a child but the effect is the same. In both cartoons Japan is portrayed as being small and ineffectual. In neither case does Japan present a serious threat to Suess’s American eagle. Combined with the physical shortcomings listed above this approach does much to attempt to emasculate the Japanese en masse. This sentiment is expressed with more sinister connotations in Image 8. Japan is drawn as a small child-like thug holding the head of a Westerner. This picture suggests an uncivilised nature behind the unintelligent smile. The larger figure, hand resting on the child’s shoulder in western (i.e. civilised) dress proposes a two-fold message. First, that Japan is not wholly accountable for its actions. Second, a warning to all Americans who are culpable enough to befriend Japan, “There would be a price to pay.” The accusation of under-development was often articulated through a simian metaphor. As Dower tells us, “... the depiction of groups and individuals by nonhuman forms or symbols is not in itself inherently demeaning. The American eagle and British lion are ample proof to the contrary.... What we are concerned with here is something different: the attachment of stupid, bestial, even pestilential subhuman caricatures on the enemy, and the manner in which this blocked seeing the foe as rational or even human....”8 Due to issues of style and his own tastes Geisle treatment of this correlation was mostly comical and fairly unassertive as in Image 9 where Japan — drawn as a monkey - is simply following orders. But even the style of Dr Suess cannot hide the danger presented by Japan in Image 10. Here the metaphor does not concern a monkey but the effect is the same. Despite possessing a human’s head and western clothes Japan is still essentially displayed as a monster. In the work of other artists the simian comparison often takes on a more menacing tone. In this phase the Japanese are presented as something worse than an irresponsible child, they become irredeemable beasts. Their inferiority is not merely a measure a maturity. They become a race consisting of mere animals that “deserved to die.”9 Americans considered this dehumanisation of the Japanese as an appropriate reaction to atrocities that occurred both before and during the war, such as the Nanking Massacre and the treatment of prisoners of war. The degree to which the Japanese were dehumanised as an enemy was reflected in battlefield metaphors. American soldiers often referred to themselves as “Rodent Exterminator”t0 and actual contact with the enemy as “clearing out a rat’s nest.”11 At home on the West Coast shop windows contained signs announcing the sale of fictitious “Jap Hunting Licenses”12 The Japanese became simply “a nameless mass of vermin.”13 Overall the child and simian metaphors, both intended as a reflection on moral stature, possessed a quality of flexibility as wartime conditions changed. The prewar image of a backward, technologically unadvanced nation was shattered by events in 1941. Pearl Harbor and other early Japanese successes forced the Americans to re-evaluate their view of Japan as simply less successful humans. The representation of Japan as a nation of under-achievers could no longer be applied in wholesale fashion and American interpretations adapted accordingly. The child ‘grew up,’ at least in physical, if not moral terms. The image used on the cover of this paper is a prime example. The Japan presented here is a far cry from that of Images 4 and 5. The roles have been reversed; it is now the US that must resort to trivial and ineffectual efforts as suggested by the caption. This increase in corporal dimensions was not associated with an increased or improved morality. In Image 10 Geisle may have dropped the simian metaphor but Japan is still presented as a monster. In deed, a Japan that is far more dangerous than that shown in Image 9. It is interesting to note that after Japan dispelled the myth of incapability that the American view allowed for simultaneously conflicting views. On the one hand the Japanese had become super-human, larger than life. On the other, they were shown as being less civilised in light of their military and technological prowess. The wartime perceptions of Japan that were held by Americans were rooted in pre-existing themes such as the “Yellow Peril” and observations of the visual distinctions drawn between Eastern and Western peoples. These were exaggerated to produce a core set of characterisations thus creating a stereotype. The physical/biological faults used in this imagery were intended to represent the shortcomings of the Japanese. Through the mediums of film and print all things Japanese were branded as small minded, treacherous and a generally inadequate. The flaws were portrayed in terms of a national character meaning that they were to be applied to the Japanese as a race, not as individuals. This thinking led to the dehumanisation of the Japanese by the West and undoubtedly accounts for much of the ferocity that marked the Pacific Theatre. Furthermore this theme would not only allow the civil rights of thousands of American citizens to be ignored it would also lead the American population to tolerate the targeting of civilians during the final stages of the war. This would, of course, ultimately play a large role in the decision to use nuclear against a people that were deemd unfit to live. Bibliography: Word Count: 2719
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