Even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began targeting Japanese-American businessmen and placing them under arrest. Following Pearl Harbor, the efforts expanded beyond businessmen and targeted the whole of the Japanese community. Executive Order 9066 "set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens." (Children of the Camps). The conditions faced by these people absolutely contravened the principles of liberty that underlined American participation in the war; they were incarcerated without due process, lost their jobs, had to leave their homes, had inadequate medical care, and were surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, despite the fact that there was no evidence to suggest than even a single Japanese-American was aiding Japan in the war effort. (Children of the Camps). While the government and the war effort may not have benefited from the internment of Japanese-Americans, it is easy to see that other groups would have. For example, rival business owners would have benefited from the internment of Japanese-Americans, as would have real estate speculators.
Knowing what motivated anti-Japanese propaganda does not wholly explain the success of posters like "Murdering Jap." To understand the success of propaganda, one must look to the reasons why people like to believe in propaganda. For anti-Japanese propaganda, the largest motivator may have been fear, because the Japanese attacked on U.S. soil. However, the poster used fear in another way; by equating "Japs" with torturers, that propaganda suggested that there was something even more fearful than death at the hands of the Japanese: torture at the hands of the Japanese.
Miller and Minsky identified a second type of propaganda, the glittering generalities. With this, the propagandist "identifies the race, nation, policy, program, candidate, with virtue by the use of virtue words - words that instead of making us fighting made, as the bad names do, put us into a kind of rosy glow." (Miller and Minsky). Specifically, they warned against the use of the word "democracy" because it would be "the key word of any propaganda campaign to get [the United States] into war or to keep [the United States] out of war." (Miller and Minsky). By remembering the four key components of democracy: political democracy, economic democracy, social democracy, and religious democracy; one can examine propaganda to see if it truly supports democracy.
The war poster that is captioned Half-slave, Half-free, uses the concept of democracy, though it couches it in even broader terms by using the word "freedom." The poster has a very moving depiction of slave-like conditions. People, including children, cowering from a shadow-figure that is dressed like a Nazi. The shadow-figure holds a whip, and is raising it towards the cowering people. The image is moving, and it clearly intends to encourage U.S. involvement in a war against a country that has not aggressed against the United States at all. However, the poster uses the glittering generality of "freedom" in a very interesting manner; one that did not portray the reality of life in America, but instead portrayed an idealized version of American life. This poster's use of a glittering generality was logical, given that it appealed to national pride, one of the key reasons that people believe in propaganda, and Americans prided themselves on celebrating freedom.
However, at the same time as this poster's publication, African-Americans in the United States were still living with the vestiges of slavery. For example, though slavery had officially ended, blacks were expected to act in a specific and subservient manner. "This racial etiquette governed the actions, manner, attitudes, and words of all black people when in the presence of whites. To violate this racial etiquette placed one's very life, and the lives of one's family, at risk." (Davis). Blacks were expected to act subserviently when encountering whites in public, by stepping off the sidewalk, removing their hats when speaking to whites, and to bring their own implements when dining from a public restaurant. (Davis). Therefore, this call to freedom belied the truth of what was going on in the United States. At the same time, however, the image of the whip was probably meant to resonate with an African-American population that was not yet a lifetime removed from slavery. While African-Americans had not attained substantive freedom, they had attained nominal freedom and were no longer subject...
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