On Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. In a speech to Congress the next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt meticulously advanced the perception that Japan acted “suddenly and deliberately” and “without warning” in a “premeditated invasion.”
Even as the U.S. responded to the attacks with remarkable unity of purpose in a war waged to uphold democracy worldwide, bigoted, false ideas about Japanese and Asian Americans proliferated, helping to impel the unjustified incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans.
In a commentary in Time magazine, two experts from The Ohio State University explain how conspiracy theories spread about the Japanese in the decades leading up to WWII set the stage for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war.
The commentary was written by Christopher McKnight Nichols, a professor of history and Hayes Chair in National Security Studies at Ohio State, and Cameron Givens, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Ohio State.
They are available to discuss how this anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day is an appropriate time for Americans to confront and learn from this history, resist impulsive rapid reactions, and better separate legitimate security concerns from those manufactured by longstanding bigotry and conspiratorial thinking. They can also discuss the attack on Pearl Harbor and other issues involving WWII.
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