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195 World war ii was a race war. For Americans, it was a race war against the Japanese. Outraged by the surprise Japanese aggression at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the American people, along with Congress, fully supported President Franklin Roosevelt in declaring war against Japan. Americans, public officials and ordinary citizens alike, knew very little about the Japanese and their culture, and this unfamiliarity and ignorance helped foster fear and racism. Americans readily ascribed notorious and inhumane—even beast-like— qualities to the Japanese as their natural and inherent characteristics. As historian John Dower convincingly documents in his book, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, this racist attitude toward the Japanese played itself out on the battlefront, resulting in an especially cruel and violent war in the Pacific.1 On the home front, the most public display of racism against the Japanese was the unprecedented internment of 120,000 Japanese aliens and Americans of Japanese ancestry living in the United States.2 This was one of the most racist actions taken by the American government against its own citizens, violating the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans. Something about the Japanese led the American people beyond reasonable hatred of the enemy. The source of this unreasonable hatred partially arose from the fact that the Japanese were Orientals (as Asians were then called)—a foreign race from the East whose culture and traits were vastly different from those of such European enemies as the Germans and Italians.3 Within this framework, race became a crucial factor in the experience not only of Japanese and Japanese Americans, but of all Asians and Asian Americans living in the United States during World War II. American racism was directed specifically at the Japanese, but this racism affected all Asians and Asian Americans who looked similar to the Japanese. In the public eye, Japanese Americans were easily identifiable because of their physical appearance, and although other Asian Americans of non-Japanese ancestry lived in the United States at the time, Americans often could not tell the difference or make distinctions. 8 How Koreans Repealed Their “Enemy Alien” Status Korean Americans’ Identity, Culture, and National Pride in Wartime Hawai‘i Lili M. Kim 196 kim Thanks to many historians of the Japanese internment and former internees who subsequently wrote about their experience, the hardship and degradation Japanese Americans endured in the United States during World War II is well documented. Some historians have addressed the legal issues of the evacuation of the Japanese while others have concentrated on the social injustices of the internment. All, however, focus exclusively on the experiences of Japanese Americans and mention virtually nothing of other Asian Americans living in the United States.4 Scholars of Asian immigration who discuss World War II and its impact on immigrants from Asian countries do not give this topic the full attention it deserves. Their treatment of the issue is brief, as it is usually only a segment of their larger study, and their discussion most often highlights the positive changes World War II brought Asian immigrants and their children. Thus, historians have conventionally dubbed American entrance to World War II as “the watershed ” year of opportunities for Asian Americans.5 There is no denying that in the name of wartime mobilization, Asian Americans served in the armed forces for the first time and acquired jobs hitherto closed to them. But Asian Americans were not the only group of people who enjoyed marginal economic gain during World War II. Due to increased wartime production, other Americans on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder also found better-paying jobs. By emphasizing economic mobility, historians of Asian immigration have failed to take into consideration that Asian Americans, by virtue of their looks and racial affiliation with Japanese Americans, became the central target of American racism as the United States entered the war. Therefore, we need to frame World War II and Japanese internment as a decisive instance of racism affecting all Asians and Asian Americans living in the United States. In viewing Japanese internment from this angle, I do not mean to disparage the injustice and inhumanity that Japanese and Japanese Americans endured. Nor do I wish to imply that Asians and Asian Americans somehow stood on a common racial ground or shared a strong racial identity in the United States during World War II. Rather, by insisting that we broaden the examination of American...

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