After the Pearl Harbor attacks, much anti-Japanese paraphernalia and propaganda surfaced in the United States. An example of this was the so-called "Jap hunting license", a faux-official document, button or medallion that purported to authorize "open season" on "hunting" the Japanese, despite the fact that over a quarter of a million Americans at that time were of Japanese origin. Some reminded holders that there was "no limit" on the number of "Japs" they could "hunt or trap". These "licenses" often characterized Japanese people as sub-human. Many of the “Jap Hunting Licenses”, for example, depicted the Japanese in animalistic fashion.[1]
Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 plunged the United States into war and planted the notion of Japanese treachery in the minds of Americans. The hysteria that enveloped the West Coast during the early months of the war, combined with long standing anti-Asian prejudices, set the stage for what was to come.[2]
Executive Order 9066 authorized the military to exclude any person from any area of the country where national security was considered threatened. It gave the military broad authority over the civilian population without the imposition of martial law. Although the order did not mention any specific group or recommend detention, its language implied that any citizen might be removed. In practice, the order was applied almost exclusively to Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals, with only few Italian and German Americans suffering similar fates. Ultimately, approximately 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans were interned in housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps".[3][4]
Edmund Russell writes that, whereas in Europe Americans perceived themselves to be struggling against "great individual monsters", such as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Goebbels, Americans often saw themselves fighting against a "nameless mass of vermin", in regards to Japan.[5] Russell attributes this to the outrage of Americans in regards to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, American politicians decrying the killing of American POWs in the hands of Imperial Japanese forces, and the perceived "inhuman tenacity" demonstrated in the refusal of Imperial forces to surrender. Kamikaze suicide bombings, according to John Morton Blum, were instrumental in confirming this stereotype of the "insane martial spirit" of Imperial Japan, and the bigoted picture it would engender of the Japanese people as a whole.[6]
To understand where the word “Jap” comes from a comparison to the “Nazis” as it left space for the recognition of the “good German,” but scant comparable place for “good Japanese.” Magazines like Time hammered this home even further by frequently referring to “the Jap” rather than “Japs,” thereby denying the enemy even the merest semblance of pluralism.[7]
Commonwealth troops also employed rhetoric of "hunting", in regards to their doing battle with Imperial Japanese forces. According to T. R. Moreman, the demonization of the Japanese served "to improve morale, foster belief that the war in the Far East was worthwhile and build the moral component of fighting power." Training instruction issue by the headquarters of 5th Indian Division suggested, "The JAP is a fanatic and therefore a menace until he is dead!... It will be our fanatical aim to KILL JAPS. Hunt him and kill him like any other wild beast!"[8]