Historic Japanese Prejudice & Racism Films

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Historic Japanese Prejudice & Racism Films

During World War II, the United States government produced a series of racist propaganda films with the purpose of increasing discrimination, prejudice and racism toward Japanese people, Japanese culture and Japanese Americans. These films were produced in a dark era of racial discrimination and racism in America and frankly, the films are quite appalling. However, they are vital educational resources about WWII and the history of racism. In order to change the future, we must learn from the mistakes of the past. We have collected these prejudice propaganda films and digitized them onto DVD format with the intention of spreading these visual resources worldwide at a low cost so anyone can learn about cultural diversity, racial and religious discrimination, national origin discrimination and racial prejudice. Now you too can watch these videos and learn how Japanese culture was viewed as evil for a period of time by fearful, racist American citizens, soldiers and war hawk government interest groups. These films vilified the Japanese people while rationalizing the segregation of Japanese Americans into internment war camps in the Midwest during WWII. This collection includes invaluable video footage of these tragic camps and vintage United States government race propaganda films.

Included Films:

Challenge To Democracy

Produced: 1944

Length: 18 Minutes

More than 100,000 men, women, and children all of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes in the pacific coast states to war time communities established in out of way places. Contrary to the military presence and the barbed wire, internment of these innocent American citizens was not forced, or so states the film. An attempt for the United States government to justify moving thousands of people illegally during the start of the Second World War with fear of an invasion by Japan after Pearl Harbor the U.S. government rounded up people of Japanese ethnicity and shipped them off to camps where they could keep a safe eye on them, not just for all Americas sake but for the safety of those people. With their things put in storage ad lives turned upside down, Challenge to Democracy, states they were merely dislocated people, an unwounded casualties of war. But at what cost to freedom and democracy? The film serves as an excellent demonstration of propaganda and shows one nations attempt to hide their hypocrisies, as they simultaneously fight against tyrannical ideas on the shores of Europe, while embrassign them on their own soil.

Japanese Relocation

Produced: 1943

Length: 9 Minutes

This controversial film attempts to defend the highly unconstitutional actions of the United States War Relocation Authority during World War II. Milton S. Eisenhower, director of the WRA, narrates the story of how 100,000 Japanese people, two thirds of them American citizens, were forced into internment camps in order to prevent espionage during the war. Falsely, the film presents the Japanese as willing and happy to sacrifice for the war effort, Japanese themselves cheerfully handled the enormous paperwork involved. The forcible auctioning of their personal property, including houses, businesses, family valuables, and vehicles, is whitewashed as well, with the narrator saying relocation often involved financial sacrifice for the evacuees, who cooperated wholeheartedly. Instead of camps, the film refers to assembly centers located in race tracks, fair grounds, and other public areas. The camps are shown in some detail, including the medical facilities, Americanization classes, cafeteria, irrigation projects, and field work in sugar beet farms. In all, this is a fascinating, but sad look at a dark time in our nations history.

My Japan

Produced: 1945

Length: 16 Minutes

This violent, racist, and inflammatory WWII propaganda film was made in order to sell war bonds, but also to cement the Japanese into the minds of the American public as inhuman monsters who would fight until their last man, woman and child were dead, rather than accept defeat. A caucasian actor made to look Japanese narrates and shows captured war footage to the American audience in an attempt to make the viewer feel as though they are privy to Japanese secrets and motivations instead of American military propaganda. He starts the film out by saying, So, you are the enemy? He goes on to taunt the viewer by insulting Americans, The methods you propose amuse us. You say you can destroy us by starving us out. You forget that we are not like you. We have no soft bellies crying for beefsteaks and butter and candy. You say you can destroy us by making sacrifices. How we suffer when you do not have a full tank of gasoline…How we tremble when you have to wait to get into movies, restaurants, nightclubs. Sacrifices? What a delightful and foolish sense of humor you have. He depicts the Japanese as soulless automatons who work sixteen hour days and then go home and eat Chinese babies for dinner. This film not only spurs Americans to buy war bonds, it also seems to have a much darker purpose, that of preparing the American public for the concept of total war against Japan. It shows intensely violent war atrocities committed by the Japanese, including dead men, women, and children, executions, beheadings, and other highly graphic footage. It depicts the Japanese as a people willing to do anything in order to achieve world domination – a people that couldnt be stopped with the normal processes of war such as bombings, blockades, and ground battles. This horrifying film is important to preserve so that future generations will know of the hateful racism that used to be commonly accepted throughout the world.

Our Enemy: The Japanese

Produced: 1943

Length: 19 Minutes

This intensely racist World War II propaganda film aims at showing the public how different and inhuman the Japanese are from Americans. Setting Japanese people up as the hated other was easy for Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan, who narrates the film. I can testify that they are as different from ourselves as any people on this planet. The real difference is in their minds. You cannot measure Japanese sense of logic by any Western yardstick. Their weapons are modern; their thinking 2000 years out of date. He describes them as a people who are brought up from infancy in a warlike culture that trains them to believe that it is their God-given right to rule the world, and they will fanatically fight to the death in order to achieve it. As he gives this running racist commentary, inflammatory and often misleading scenes of Japanese life roll by. Children are shown doing calisthenics, soldiers are shown marching, Emperor Hirohito sits his horse, people perform Shinto worship, and Japanese soldiers commit grisly war atrocities. This film is American war propaganda at its worst and most prejudiced.