Re:Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps
by krapp on Friday December 09, 2016 @12:36PM
(#13140178)
>Do you really believe that it was because Japan is dominantly a non-Christian culture and not because they look different?
I believe it was both - they're two sides of the same coin. Look at the propaganda of the time - the Japanese were portrayed as being fundamentally inhuman in a way that Europeans weren't. The myth of the "inscrutable Oriental" has been around in the West for a very long time, the Japanese mind and morality were considered to be incomprehensible.
That Japanese Americans looked different probably made this xenophobia easier to act upon, though.
I believe it was both - they're two sides of the same coin. Look at the propaganda of the time - the Japanese were portrayed as being fundamentally inhuman in a way that Europeans weren't. The myth of the "inscrutable Oriental" has been around in the West for a very long time, the Japanese mind and morality were considered to be incomprehensible.
That Japanese Americans looked different probably made this xenophobia easier to act upon, though.