Movies
As a common form of entertainment for many Americans, motion pictures portrayed a positive image of relocation to non-Japanese movie-goers. Produced by the United States War Relocation Authority, such movies as A Challenge to Democracy (1944) and Japanese Relocation (1943), depicted the internment camps in a positive light and showed the Japanese people as happy and content, benefiting from their new life in the internment camps. To accomplish this, these government-issued propaganda films touched on common positive themes, such as:
- ensuring the safety of internee property
- providing Japanese-Americans with greater opportunities, such as education, employment, internal government, and religion
- cooperation of the internees with the local authorities and federal government
- language comparing the relocated people to early American frontiersmen
Such motion pictures were made with film from actual Japanese-American internment camps with a narrator informing the audience of what they were witnessing. As the UCLA Film and Television Archive writes:
film reminds us how easily unpleasant truths can be rationalized into banality and individual liberties can be swept away. (UCLA, 2007)
Read more about this topic: Propaganda For Japanese-American Internment
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