2015
By V.M Vermeer
For dhr. prof. dr. W.
Klinkert
American Propaganda in World War II Movies:
The Decline of Idealistic Liberalism in the OWI when
Portraying the Japanese Enemy
American Propaganda in World War II Movies:
The Decline of Idealistic Liberalism in the OWI when
Portraying the Japanese Enemy
By V.M Vermeer
Student number:
10885056
Master thesis
University of Amsterdam
For
Dhr. prof. dr. W. Klinkert
Military History
Date:
June 2015
Word count: 22543
2
Preface
I have always been fascinated by propaganda and, when looking for a subject for my thesis, I was
immediately attracted to studying something related to propaganda. I did not know what subject,
however, and desperately looked for a topic connected to propaganda that had not yet been
studied. I initially had a very wide scope, with a time period considerably longer than that of the
Second World War, with far more countries than the United States of America, and concerned
with the entire subject of propaganda. Fortunately Professor Klinkert and Professor Amersfoort
advised me during the thesis presentation to focus more on a single subject. I reduced the focus of
my thesis to just the United States, and, more specifically, to a specific agency. Moreover, instead
of studying all propaganda, I sought to focus only on movies, and only during World War II. After
that, I decided to also focus on the portrayal of the Japanese in propaganda as I think it is an
interesting subject. Over time the focus of my thesis evolved as I learned more about the subject.
Questions that I had initially asked proved to be irrelevant. These include questions such as: ‘How
did they convince the people to support the war?’ This question was not worth asking given that
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor accomplished that task for most Americans. I hope that
anyone else who is fascinated by propaganda also enjoys this thesis and learns something about
the subject. I suspect that many will be surprised at the ‘war’ that was fought and lost between
the idealistic propagandists and reality. I would like to thank my professors for their help, my
parents for feeding me, the authors of the books I have used, the people who kindly made primary
sources available and my friends who participated in my brainstorming. In addition, I should thank
the propagandists and Hollywood for making the propaganda movies I examined during this
thesis.
3
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the way in which the Japanese people are portrayed in World War II films.
These films were often made in cooperation with the American government for the purpose of
propaganda. The Office of War Information was a very idealistic agency, but its ideals are not
always noticeable in the films. It believed in the equality off all races and that propaganda should
reflect this. This can be seen in the portrayal of the Allied nations and African Americans, as well as
in the portrayal of Germans and Italians. However, the portrayal of the Japanese does not reflect
this idealism. The Bureau of Motion Pictures branch of the Office of War Information failed to
influence the portrayal of the Japanese in wartime movies. Despite this, the portrayal did improve
during the war, but it never came close to comparing with the portrayal of the Germans. It is
difficult to thank the Bureau of Motion Pictures for this improvement in portrayal due to its
lackluster work in this field. Rather, one should look to those idealistic men from Hollywood who
changed the way the Japanese were portrayed out of their own volition.
4
Table of Contents
Introduction
6
What is Propaganda?
9
What was the position of propaganda in American society?
12
Which American government organizations were responsible for propaganda?
14
What were the propagandists’ ideals?
18
What was the situation in Hollywood when the Bureau of Motion Pictures was established?
24
How were the Japanese generally thought of during the war?
27
How did the propagandists of the Office of War Information work with Hollywood?
29
How can the influence of the Office of War Information propagandists be seen in the movies? 42
What were the results of the Office of War Information’s influence?
65
Conclusion
71
Bibliography
72
5
Introduction
Most people have seen propaganda, whether they realize it or not. Propaganda can be incredibly
overt or it can be subtle. All of the major warring powers used propaganda during World War II.
This was easier for some countries than it was for others. With a strongly centralized state, the
Nazis could easily disseminate their propaganda to the German people and to the rest of the
world. However, the Americans lived in a democracy, which made it more difficult to control
people with propaganda. In this thesis, I examine the American propaganda effort. This began very
idealistically, with most of its top men being strongly liberal supporters of the New Deal policy.
Their struggle to balance their ideals with the reality of the war and the need to persuade the
American people lies at the center of this thesis. These ideals included a world of equality in which
men of all races, creeds and religions were joined together in a democracy. However, the racial
aspect of this idea was not easy to portray in propaganda, especially in the case of the Japanese.
The United States was not kind to the Japanese people during World War II, and this included
Japanese Americans. The portrayal of Japanese Americans in American movies provides an ideal
example of the failure of the American propagandists in the Office of War Information (OWI) to
keep their ideals of telling the truth and promoting equality.
In order to prepare for this thesis, I looked at a wide variety of American propaganda efforts and
concluded that the medium of film was the best one to focus on in this research. There are four
reasons for this. Firstly, the United States excels in films and Hollywood was having its golden age
during World War II. While there were and are other countries with movie industries, at that time
none was as large and influential as Hollywood. Secondly, during my research I found quotes from
top propaganda men saying that film was the most effective domestic propaganda weapon they
had. Thirdly, the medium of film is a visual medium that also uses sound. This makes it excellent as
a propaganda medium, allowing the propagandists to influence people with both auditory and
visual information. Most other propaganda mediums are only able to use one of these ways.
Fourthly, the medium of film is interesting because the amount of control the OWI actually had
over it varied greatly. This led to great variation in how far the movies stuck to propaganda ideals.
These factors, together with the need for movies to entertain, created a unique situation where
the OWI ideals frequently failed to make it onto the screen. The cases where this failing was most
6
obvious are the cases that deal with the portrayal of the Japanese. Those cases will be central to
this thesis.
The Research Problem is:
If the employees of the Office of War information were so liberal and were against racism, then
why was American World War II propaganda so racist?
The research question of this thesis is as follows:
Did the propagandists of the Office of War Information manage to effectively propagandize the
American people through the medium of movies while remaining true to their ideals regarding the
portrayal of the enemy, specifically the Japanese?
To find the answer to this question I will first answer several questions, each of which has its own
chapter
1. What is propaganda?
2. What was the position of propaganda in American society?
3. Which American government organizations were responsible for propaganda?
4. What were the propagandists’ ideals?
5. What was the situation in Hollywood when the Bureau of Motion Pictures was established?
6. How were the Japanese generally thought of during the war?
7. How did the propagandists of the Office of War Information work with Hollywood?
8. How can the influence of the Office of War Information propagandists be seen in the
movies?
9. What were the results of the Office of War Information’s influence?
Chapter One provides the definition of propaganda that will be used throughout the thesis and
also gives a short introduction to different types of propaganda. Chapter Two presents
background information on the position of propaganda in American society. Chapter Three
describes the various government institutions responsible for propaganda. Chapter Four is
concerned with the ideals of the American propagandists. Chapter Five looks at the situation in
Hollywood before the Bureau of Motion Pictures started to influence it. Chapter Six considers the
way in which the Japanese were thought of during the war in order to provide context to their
portrayal in propaganda. Chapter Seven provides practical examples in order to portray the
propagandists’ interactions with Hollywood and their influence on the movies made during the
7
war and also looks at the content of those movies. Chapter Eight looks at the results of that
influence on public opinion in and the movies.
I am not the first person to study propaganda. Scholars such as Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D.
Black have performed extensive research into American propaganda during World War II. Many
other authors have written on both propaganda and the way the Japanese were perceived during
World War II, but I did not find a book that specifically combined these subjects. This is a subject
that cannot be avoided so it came up frequently, but most works did not make the connection
between the ideals of the Office of War Information and the portrayal of the Japanese, or if they
did this it was only a small chapter of the work and was not the focus. There have also been many
theses on subjects related to this such as the role of Women in propaganda, the use of cartoons in
propaganda, the downfall of the Bureau of Motion Pictures and specifically on the portrayal of
Japanese Americans. What I hope to offer in this thesis is a new look at the way in which the Office
of War Information’s branch, the Bureau of Motion Pictures, did or did not influence how the
Japanese were portrayed in the war movies of the era. In order to do this, I considered several
aspects related to propaganda and the Bureau of Motion Pictures it’s the history. I then analyzed
several movies that they either were or were not involved in, in order to discover how much effect
they actually had on their content. Finally, I examined whether their propaganda had an effect on
public opinion in order to discover how successful they were at propagandizing.
8
What is propaganda?
Before one can write on a subject related to propaganda, one needs to define the word
propaganda. Several definitions are given for propaganda and they all share common elements.
Merriam-Webster defines propaganda as ‘ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated
and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.’ 1 In Hollywood
Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies, propaganda is
broadly defined as ‘the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or
groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for
predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations.’2 Richard Shale notes that
propaganda is difficult to define, but argues that any definition should include the key words
‘emotion’ and ‘persuasion’, and that the definition should include that it requires a response from
the audience and is produced by organizations.3 A conference on Contemporary Soviet
Propaganda and Disinformation held after World War II and sponsored by the U.S. Department of
State and the CIA concluded that propaganda:
involves the dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumors, half-truths or lies—
to influence public opinion. As a systematic effort to persuade, it is an act of advocacy in mass
communications, involving the making of deliberately one-sided statements to a mass audience. In
this, it is not necessarily deceptive. Propaganda, then, is a process—a form of manipulative
communication designed to elicit some predetermined response— ‘the organized spreading of
special doctrines, information, ideas or beliefs to promote or injure a cause, group, nation, etc.’ 4
1
Merriam-Webster, ‘Propaganda’ (version 25 April 2015) http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/propaganda (25 April 2015).
2
Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda
Shaped World War II Movies (New York 1987) 49-50.
3
Richard Shale, Donald Duck Joins Up: The Walt Disney Studio During World War II (Ann Arbor 1982) 12.
4
Martin Kaplan and Johanna Blakley, Warners’ War: Politics, Pop Culture and Propaganda in Wartime
Hollywood (Los Angeles 2004) 68.
9
Ted J. Smith writes that the definitions of propaganda can be divided into two groups. There are
those that trace its origins to the Catholic missions to spread the faith and for whom propaganda
is not necessarily a negative term. And there are those that always see propaganda as something
negative, which is carried out by their opponents for the purpose of manipulating public opinion.
Smith defines propaganda as every conscious and open attempt to influence the attitude of
individuals and groups, guided by a predefined goal and characterized by the systematic use of
irrational and often unethical techniques of persuasion.5 Leonard W. Doob, former director of the
Overseas Intelligence department of the Office of War Information, provides the following
definition of propaganda:
Intentional propaganda is a systemic attempt by an interested individual (or individuals) to
control the attitudes of groups of individuals through the use of suggestion and, consequently, to
control their actions; unintentional propaganda is the control of the attitudes and, consequently,
the actions of groups of individuals through the use of suggestion.6
He recognizes two types of propaganda. Intentional propaganda is deliberately created in order to
further a goal without concern for the facts and unintentional propaganda attempts to educate by
using facts and the truth, but it still influences opinion because it showcases a specific viewpoint
by only using certain facts.7
Thus a variety of experts have given several different definitions of propaganda. By combining the
key elements, one can say that all propaganda:
attempts to influence public opinion and to persuade the public to support a certain cause
by means of the spreading of information that frequently appeals to human emotions and may or
not be factual but is almost certainly manipulated and is spread by organizations.
5
Ted J. Smith, Propaganda: A Pluralistic perspective (New York 1989)65-94.
Leonard W. Doob, Propaganda: Its Psychology and Techniques (New York 1939) 89.
7
Doob, Propaganda, 71-89.
6
10
In order to achieve their goal of persuading and influencing the public, the propagandists can use
several different techniques. They can lie, they can accuse the opponent of misdeeds, they can
hide the truth, they can twist the truth, they can change history to suit their goals, they can use
symbolism, they can intentionally misrepresent statistics and facts, they can change the facts to
suit their different audiences, they can use double standards, they can claim facts that cannot be
proven, use misleading suggestions, use stereotypes, use misleading language and materials, use
words that mean different things for different people, associate certain acts with positive or
negative elements, and so on.8
There are various forms of media available for the propagandist. I have already made clear that
this thesis will focus on the form of the movie, but it is worth noting some of the other types of
media that were at the disposal of the propagandists during the Second World War. They could
use newspapers, the radio, film, pamphlets, leaflets, handbills, books, magazines, skywriting, town
criers, public meetings, and rumors.
Armed with this knowledge of what propaganda is, how the propagandists can act and what
media they have at their disposal to propagandize, the following chapter will shed further light on
the state of propaganda in American society during the Second World War.
8
Smith, Propaganda, 65-94.
Doob, Propaganda, 25-68.
11
What was the position of propaganda in American society?
Of course, propaganda was not simply willed into existence by the men and women of the Office
of War Information. It existed before that, and Americans were aware of it before that.
Propaganda had a bad reputation in the United States. Due to the role it played during World War
I. Part of the fault lies with George Creel, whose propaganda campaign had left people with a
negative impression of propaganda. Creel had used two main techniques in his propaganda,
namely: Atrocity stories and hate pictures. An example of an atrocity story is the frequent
portrayal of German soldiers as barbarians killing Belgian women and children. Hate pictures
should speak for themselves: they portrayed the enemy as monsters or as barbaric Huns. Since
1917, Creel’s Committee on Public Information had invaded the American home front with
posters, pamphlets and speakers who had attempted to combat opposition to the war and to
persuade the American people that sacrifices were necessary if democracy was to survive. He
presented a religious crusade that portrayed the Americans as those that would save the world in
the war and bring about a better age. When that did not occur after the war, the propaganda was
blamed for overselling the war effort and gained a bad reputation. Moreover, many felt that there
was guilt on both sides and that British propaganda had tricked the American people into
participating in the war.9
In addition to this bad reputation due to the role of propaganda in the First World War, there was
also a powerful faction of isolationists who rightly viewed propaganda as the weapon of the
enemy. After all, propaganda at the time supported intervention in the war. The isolationists
counted influential men among their number, such as the celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh, the
Roman Catholic radio priest Father Coughlin and many members of Congress. Even though their
influence declined as the war in Europe raged on, they kept attacking what they perceived as the
propagandists until the attack on Pearl Harbor ruined any chance of keeping the United States of
America out of the war. Hollywood was also a popular target for them, as they perceived its action
movies as pro-interventionist propaganda. Furthermore, despite having set up various propaganda
9
Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (London 1978) 17.
Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda, The Art of Persuasion: World War II (Leicester 1993) 139-176.
Wiliam L. O’Neill, A Democracy at War: America’s Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II (New York
1993) 129-152.
Kaplan and Blakley, Warners’ War, 27-37.
12
organs, President Roosevelt was also suspicious of propaganda. Initially, many ranking military
officers were also not fans of propaganda. They preferred to say nothing at all, fearing that any
information, no matter how innocuous, could be used against them. They also saw it as a cowardly
tactic.10
It should not be forgotten that the United States was a democracy. It is more difficult to organize
propaganda in democratic countries, as lies are more easily exposed due to the freedom of the
press, something which dictatorships lack. The propagandists also have to hold themselves to
more rules. They cannot simply order people around, but have to persuade them. People in a
democracy also lack the expected indoctrination that is a part of living in a dictatorship; they tend
to think for themselves and are willing to criticize their leaders. Moreover, Americans were not
blind and they saw the way propaganda was used by fascists, Nazis and communists. None of
these groups were liked by Americans and in the minds of many Americans a negative connection
existed between propaganda and those parties.11
The propagandists faced a tough task. Their job was to propagandize a people that distrusted
propaganda, with a government that did not fully support them, while also remaining faithful to
their own ideals.
10
Winkler, Politics, 1-37.
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 17-47.
Colin Shindler, Hollywood Goes to War: Films and American Society 1939-1952 (London 1979) 26-32.
Lewis Jacobs, ‘World War II and the American Film’, Cinema Journal Vol 7, Winter (1967) 1-21.
Kaplan and Blakley, Warners’ War, 61-70.
Robert MacDougall, ‘Red, Brown and Yellow Perils: Images of the American Enemy in the 1940s and 1950s’,
The Journal of Popular Culture Volume 32, Issue 4 (Spring 1999) 59-73.
Doris Milberg, World War II on the Big Screen: 450+ Films, 1938-2008 (Jefferson 2010) 7-14.
O’Neill, Democracy, 105-152, 247-266.
11
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
13
Which American government organizations were
responsible for propaganda?
The Office of War Information was the most important domestic American propaganda
organization during the war, but it was not the first. The first organization established to influence
the American people was founded before the United States entered the war. This was the Office
of Government Reports (OGR), which was led by Lowell Mellett and established in September
1939 as the successor to the public information programs of the New Deal years. It had a variety of
tasks related to information, but its most important task in this context was to provide the public
with information about the activities of various government agencies. This was a fairly innocuous
task, but it nevertheless drew the ire of Republicans, isolationists, Republican isolationists and the
press who liked to call it the OGRE. It never became a propaganda agency of any real worth,
keeping its work limited to passing out small amounts of information to the public.12
The Division of Information of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which was
established in March 1941 and led by Robert Horton, was slightly more successful. This was a
defense initiative that sought to organize the stories that the different defense branches wanted
to tell to the public. It was hamstrung because the president was reluctant to work with it and
because its information releases conflicted with those of the Army and the Navy. Despite this
reluctance Roosevelt realized that he needed to do something with propaganda and he embraced
a policy of giving the public the (presumably) unembellished facts about the war and the American
government’s response to it. To do this, he established the Office of Facts and Figures (OFF) in
October 1941, which would be led by Archibald Macleish. According to Roosevelt, its purpose was
‘to facilitate a widespread and accurate understanding of the status and progress of the national
defense effort (…) and activities of the Government.’13 It went to lengths to convince the press
that it was not a propaganda agency, but that it wanted to provide truth and facts. However, like
12
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Winkler, Politics, 8-37.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Clayton R. Koppes, ‘What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945’
The Journal of American History Vol. 64, No. 1. (June 1977) 87-105.
13
Winkler, Politics, 23.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
14
the other predecessors of the Office of War Information it proved to be ineffective and unpopular.
What it put out was dull and unconvincing and it lacked the authority to convince the rest of the
government to support it.14
In addition to these domestic efforts there also were several efforts set up that sought to
propagandize abroad such as the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCCCRBAR)
led by Nelson Rockefeller and established in August 1940 which aimed at Latin-America and
actually enjoyed some success. There also was the work of Colonel William G. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan
who became the head of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) that was established in
July 1941, and whose work focused more on subversion and psychological warfare. The Foreign
Information Service (FIS) was set up in August 1941 and was led by Robert Sherwood who worked
under Donovan. In contrast to the COI, the FIS operated strictly within the limits of the law.
However, these information programs also encountered problems which, together with the
problems of the domestic branches, convinced the Bureau of the Budget in February 1942 that a
solution was needed. 15
The Bureau of the Budget commissioned a survey that was led by Milton S. Eisenhower. This found
the current conditions unsatisfactory, but advised against setting up a central organization such as
Creel had controlled. Despite this, the Bureau of the Budget requested that a central office be
founded, with the help of Robert Sherwood who also served as Roosevelt’s speechwriter.
Roosevelt was reluctant and the OCCCRBAR and the COI did not want to be included in this
initiative but on June 13, 1942 the executive order was signed for a central Office of War
Information (OWI) that would consolidate the activities of the other offices. It was to be led by
radio commentator and journalist Elmer Davis and was to be responsible for both domestic and
overseas propaganda, barring Latin America.16
14
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Winkler, Politics, 8-37.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
15
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Winkler, Politics, 8-37.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
16
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Winkler, Politics, 8-37.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘Executive Order 9182 Establishing the Office of War Information’, June 13, 1942.
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley ed. The American Presidency Project (28 April 2015)
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16273.
15
The domestic duties of the Office of War Information were as follows:
Formulate and carry out, through the use of press, radio, motion picture and other
facilities, information programs designed to facilitate the development of an informed and
intelligent understanding (…) of the status and progress of the war effort and of the war policies,
activities and the aims of the government. Coordinate the war informational activities of all
Federal departments and agencies for the purpose of assuring an accurate and consistent flow of
war information to the public (…). Obtain, study and analyze information concerning the war effort
and advise the agencies concerned with the dissemination of such information as to the most
appropriate and effective means of keeping the public adequately and accurately informed.
Review, clear and approve all proposed radio and motion picture programs sponsored by Federal
departments and agencies; and serve as the central point of clearance and contact for the radio
broadcasting and motion picture industries, respectively, in their relationships with federal
departments and agencies concerning such government programs.17
One branch of the OWI was central for movies, which are the subject of this thesis. This was the
Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) that was to be led by Lowell Mellett. It was set up separately
from all the other offices in December 1941 on the order of Roosevelt. The BMP was a response to
the movie industry’s offer of support and sought to advise Hollywood on how it could support the
war effort. It became a part of the OWI in June 1942 and became one of the agency’s most
important branches. Since American movies had been banned in many parts of the world, it
became part of the domestic branch. Lowell Mellett employed Nelson Poynter, a former journalist
colleague, to head the BMP’s liaison office and Dorothy Jones, a pioneer in film content analysis,
to head its review department.18
While the OWI had more power than its predecessors, it also had its own problems. It had several
conflicting tasks as it had taken over the work of its predecessors. It had to provide truthful
information to the American public, but it was also supposed to secure actions by the public, such
17
Roosevelt ‘Executive Order’.
Winkler, Politics, 38-73.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
A. H. Feller, ‘OWI on the Home Front’, Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1943) 55-65.
18
16
as enlisting or buying war bonds. It was expected to provide truthful information abroad, but it
also had to provide manipulated information for the purpose of propaganda. The executive order
had also left doubt about how much the American public was entitled to know. In order to provide
truthful information it had to provide information given by the Army, Navy and State Department,
but it had no power to demand that those organizations give any information and the amount of
information those organizations preferred not to give in the name of national security was
overwhelming. Had it been up to them, hardly a word would have been given to the public about
losses. Even without these problems, it would have had a tough task ahead, due to the ideals of its
employees.19
19
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Winkler, Politics, 8-37.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Roosevelt ‘Executive Order’.
Elmer Davis, ‘Owi Has a Job’, Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1943) 5-14.
Feller, ‘OWI’, 55-65.
17
What were the propagandists’ ideals?
An office or bureau without its employees is just an office. It’s nothing. The same can be said of
the OWI and its branches. It was shaped by its employees and their ideals and they were the ones
who made it into what it was. It was overwhelmingly liberal for its time and staunchly in the camp
of New Dealers. Elmer Davis, the head of the OWI, was an anti-fascist and former isolationist
turned interventionist. Robert Sherwood and Archibald Macleish, the heads of the foreign and
domestic branches respectively, were both literary figures of note, dedicated anti-fascists,
interventionists and strong believers in the use of propaganda. Lowell Mellett and Nelson Poynter
were both interventionist New Dealers; and Poynter certainly was not recruited for his experience
with movies, having admitted that he had barely seen any before his appointment. While I have
not seen any evidence of her admitting it, one can deduce from her postwar activities that
Dorothy Jones also shared their political convictions. The strict Ulric Bell, the BMP’s strongman,
was also a committed liberal interventionist. One exception was Gardner Cowles Jr. a moderate
Republican publisher recruited to give the OWI some bipartisan representation. Besides these
men and woman in important positions, most of its workforce also consisted of known
intellectuals, political activists, artists and others with liberal convictions.20
While their liberalism can be confirmed by many sources, it is rather meaningless to call them
liberal without explicitly describing what this entails. Fortunately the OWI propagandists provided
enough clarity on what it entails. The men and women of the OWI and its branches had two goals
for the war. They wanted to actively assist in winning the war and they wanted to lay the
foundations for a better postwar world. The second goal is where their ideals can be seen. The one
thing that the OWI employees made clear at the beginning was that they wanted to tell the truth.
Elmer Davis made this clear when he took office:21
20
Winkler, Politics, 8-37.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Feller, ‘OWI’, 55-65
.
21
Winkler, Politics, 1-7, 38-72.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-112, 278-328.
Locke, Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen From World War II to the Present: The Orientalist Buddy Film
(New York 2009) 15-36.
18
‘This is a people’s war, and to win it the people should know as much about it as they can. This
office will do its best to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, both at home and abroad. Military
information that will aid the enemy must be withheld; but within that limitation we shall try to
give the people a clear, complete and accurate picture.’22
The propagandists believed strongly in democracy and were opposed to negotiating with the
Japanese and the Germans. They supported the policy of unconditional surrender that President
Roosevelt preached. They believed strongly in national unity, and wanted to see all races, creeds
and ethnicities coming together, they also wanted to see labor and capital uniting. All races, of
course, also included those that could be considered the enemy, and thus they, also wanted the
Japanese to eventually share in this new world. Besides this rather idealistic reason for fighting to
improve portrayal of the Japanese, there were also some more practical reasons. The first was the
issue of the Japanese Americans who would have to be resettled after the war, and second was
the need to understand the enemy. If the enemy was not understood, and was not portrayed as a
formidable but equal foe in propaganda, but was rather viewed as either a weakling or a
superman, this would hurt the war effort. They saw the war as a People’s war, in which everyone
came together to fight evil and the ideology of fascism. Roosevelt had proclaimed that the war
was being fought for the Four Freedoms, namely, ‘freedom of speech and worship and freedom
from want and fear. ‘The OWI fully supported this, and propagandized for them even when the
rest of the government pulled back from its extravagant claim. They saw the postwar world as a
new world, in which the Four Freedoms would be shared by everyone, including the defeated Axis
powers. This was a People’s War in which they believed everyone, even the civilians of the
opposing governments, should unite in order to fight against the fascist for a new, democratic
world. This was the reason why they believed in unconditional surrender; because if the enemy
could demand conditions then fascism would be able to live on. They believed that this was not a
national, class or race war, but rather a people’s struggle. They sincerely believed that everyone
had a stake in the war, and that an allied victory would bring a decent standard of living to all,
including jobs, good housing, recreation, health services and old-age pensions. Everyone, including
22
Feller, ‘OWI’, 57-58.
19
minorities would enjoy the right to participate in government. In short, the propagandists of the
OWI believed in a worldwide New Deal.23
In the case of the movie industry, the OWI actually published a document that clearly stated their
ideals and how they should be translated onto the screen. This ‘Government Information Manual
for the Motion Picture Industry’, assembled by Poynter and his staff in June 1942 and updated
throughout the war, provides a comprehensive statement of the OWI’s vision of America, the war
and the world as it should be applied in movies (or ‘motion pictures’ as they called them). It
provides a very good reflection of their vision of how the entertainment industry should act, and
how their ideals should be made visible in the movies.24
This manual, and with it the OWI, assumed three basic facts. Firstly that the overwhelming
majority of the people are behind the government in its war program, but that they do not have
adequate knowledge and understanding of the program. The OWI does not want blind followers,
but a public that thinks and understands the program and then willingly makes the required
sacrifices. They have faith that if the public is told the truth that it will then do whatever it can to
support the democracy in its fight. Secondly, they believe that the people are intelligent and
support an intelligent program so that the people will in turn support an intelligent war program
of decency, integrity, idealism and enlightened selfishness (self-interest). Lastly, they believe that
only the ignorant, frustrated, poverty-stricken and reactionary men of wealth support fascism and
that with adequate effort the ignorance, frustrations and wants of those groups can be
overcome.25 What they say in their opening statements already indicates the great amount of
23
Winkler, Politics, 1-7, 38-72.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-112, 278-328.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
Harry Amana, ‘The Art of Propaganda: Charles Alston’s World War II Editorial Cartoons for the Office of War
Information and the Black Press’, American Journalism, 21(2) (2004) 79-108.
William L. Bird, JR and Harry R. Rubenstein, Design for Victory: World War II Posters On The American Home
Front (New York 1998) 69-82.
Milberg, World War II, 28-37.
Walter Wanger, ‘OWI and the Motion Pictures’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 7 No. 1 (Spring 1943) 100110.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Office of War Information and Bureau of Motion Pictures, “They” got the Blame: Fact Sheet No.5 (1942).
Davis, ‘OWI Job’, 5-14.
Feller, ‘OWI’, 55-65
.
24
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-112, 223-277.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
25
Office of War Information and Bureau of Motion Pictures, Government Information Manual for the
Motion Picture Industry, (1942) 4-5.
20
idealism found in the OWI. They clearly believed in an intelligent American people, who when
presented with the truth would make the right choice and support democracy no matter the
cost.26
Looking further into the manual one discovers further clarification of the OWI ideals. Chapter I is
on ‘The Issues’ and describes what the OWI perceives as the reasons why the American public
should be and are fighting the war. This explanation is accompanied by three different quotations
from President Roosevelt that express great admiration from the OWI for his proclaimed ideals.
The manual starts with the logical and proclaims that they are fighting for survival as a nation. It
states that, while some might not understand that the actual existence of the United States of
America as a politically independent state depends on winning the war, they certainly believe that
it does. The second reason that the manual cites is that they are fighting for freedom and against
slavery, bringing the Four Freedoms quote from Roosevelt to the forefront. They want to make it
very clear that the Four Freedoms is something that impacts every single person in the world,
while also making it clear that an Axis victory would mean that the Four Freedoms would
disappear. The third reason focuses on the post-war beliefs of the OWI. They claim that they are
fighting for a New World. They see this very idealistically, arguing that a victory would bring a
more decent world, free from force and militarism for all people and for future generations. It
would enable a world community dedicated to the free flow of trade, ideas and culture. The ‘they’
that is spoken of here can be assumed to refer not just the OWI or those making the propaganda
movies, but to ‘the people’. The chapter ends by providing some almost unusable suggestions for
subjects to be dramatized for use in movies by the Hollywood men for whom this document was
made. A few of the more workable ones were adapted, but were not generally well received by
the general public if they were the focus of a movie. The suggestions in this chapter include
showing the people (labor, management and agriculture) coming together to win the war,
showing the evolution of the American way of life, showing minorities such as the ‘negroes’
improving their life thanks to democracy, showing the country as a melting pot with the people of
many races and creeds living together and fighting alongside each other while their contributions
are recognized and finally showing what is at stake, why people fight. As will be seen later, the
suggestion that America be portrayed as a melting pot was the best suggestion and was generally
26
OWI and BMP, Manual, 1-5.
21
adapted by the Hollywood men. Many war movies featured religiously and ethnically diverse men
fighting together.27
Chapter II of the manual deals with presentation of the enemy and how they should be
understood. Here one can see that the OWI did not think of the enemy as the people, or even
their leaders; rather the enemy was ‘his philosophies, objectives and tactics’. The manual once
again expresses their viewpoint in three points. First, it states the enemy is not Hitler, Mussolini or
the Japanese Warlords (note that the Japanese leadership is not referred to by name) and that
neither their defeat nor a negotiated peace would really win the war for the United Nations. The
second point explains their enemies’ objectives. Their objective is not geographical expansion, but
rather for a small faction of rulers to conquer and exploit the peoples and resources of the world
and to take away their democratic freedoms. The third point harkens back to their ideal of unity.
They believe that the enemies’ tactic is to divide and conquer people along racial, religious,
economic and political lines by way of psychological warfare, distortion of the truth and Fifth
Column tactics. This chapter also provides suggestions for subjects that they believe lend
themselves to dramatization, such as the cruelty, the cynicism, the disregard for human rights of
the enemy, together with the fact that while the enemy (in this case Japan) is powerful, they are
not invincible. Despite trying to encourage Hollywood to provide a balanced view of the enemy,
they already fall into the trap of putting Japan on unequal ground with their fellow white enemies.
Why not refer to Emperor Hirohito or Hideki Tojo by name, as they do with Adolf Hitler and Benito
Mussolini? This implies an unequal relation, and the word warlord specifically indicates a certain
backwardness. The OWI ideals are against racist portrayals in Hollywood movies, but the OWI
itself is not innocent of this.28
The third chapter is not particularly interesting for the most part, and focuses on advising that
Hollywood movies should showcase the Allied nations. It does, however, provide interesting
points in the dramatization suggestions. While it does not say so directly, it certainly suggests that
the faults of their allies should be ignored in the name of unity. British Imperialism and Soviet
Communism should be ignored in favor of portraying the heroic fights of the Russian and British
27
OWI and BMP, Manual, 6-12.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
28
OWI and BMP, Manual, 13-21.
22
peoples. However, it does show some foresight with the message that Americans should stop
looking down on China, as they believe it will soon be a world power.29
The remaining chapters of the manual do not contain much relevant information. They focus on
the home front, the fact that there is a total war going on and the moral realities of that war which
comes down to showing the reality of battle. The main message is that movies should show the
people uniting to fight together in the war both at home and abroad. Hollywood should show the
war as it really is, rather than coated in melodrama or merely as a sideline show to a comedy.
After this, the manual provides fourteen different fact sheets that are intended to give Hollywood
more information on subjects such as the War Transportation service, the Home Front, the Black
Market and the Red Cross and were inserted at a later date. It is worth noting that the version of
the manual I read was from 1942 and that there were updated versions released. One of those
apparently spelled out more clearly that the war was not being fought against the Japanese as a
race, but against the system of fascism although this was already clear from the subtext.30
The ideals presented here were not a constant for the OWI. Over time, a faction of men who came
from the advertising industry and worked in the Bureau of Campaigns gained influence. This led to
a decline in the idealistic content of the propaganda in favor of content that was more goaloriented and relied on emotions, leading to some of the more idealistic members resigning. The
OWI was also attacked in 1943 by Roosevelt’s opponents in Congress for what they felt was its
unfair support for Roosevelt’s fourth term as President and various government proposals that
had not yet passed through Congress but were already being promoted by the OWI. Southern
democrats also joined these attacks as they disliked the OWI for its idealism and support of nonwhites, specifically African Americans. Roosevelt did not help the organization and Congress
succeeded in cutting the domestic budget by 40%, initially to 5,500,000 dollars, and a little later to
2,750,000 dollars. After this many more of the OWI’s idealistic members left, including Poynter
and Mellett. The OWI’s staff was reduced from 1300 employees to only 495 employees. Several of
the former employees did help to set up private initiatives to help propagandize the war effort,
such as the Hollywood Writers Mobilization and the Writers’ War Board. 31
29
OWI and BMP, Manual, 22-31.
OWI and BMP, Manual, 32-167.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277.
31
Winkler, Politics, 38-72.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 113-141.
30
23
What was the situation in Hollywood when the Bureau
of Motion Pictures was established?
It needs to be made clear that the OWI did not need to convince Hollywood,32 or the majority of
Americans, to help support the war effort. Rather, the OWI needed to inform Hollywood and the
American people on how to help support the war effort. Many Hollywood stars joined war bond
rallies, or toured around the military bases and hospitals giving shows. Some signed up for the
army, including the director Frank Capra. They also established the Hollywood Canteen where
members of the armed forces could enjoy free food and drinks, while being served and
entertained by celebrities. A War Activities Committee was also set up to aid cooperation with the
government. This chapter aims to provide some insight into the situation of Hollywood, and to
show that, while the BMP certainly influenced Hollywood, Hollywood did not need convincing.
Hollywood wanted to help and some of its top men were great supporters of the war effort. This is
not to say that everyone in Hollywood was a supporter of the war from the very start. Especially
before the United States of America entered the war officially, there were many who preferred to
avoid controversy and war is controversial. They were helped by Will H. Hays’ enforcement of the
Motion Picture Production Code, which actively targeted movies deemed controversial, including:
movies that touched, even slightly, upon the war that was being waged in Europe.33
Some Hollywood men went beyond the call of duty in order to support the war effort. One of
these was Walt Disney, who himself approached various defense and industry officials with offers
of help. No Americans took him up on his offer at first, but after they saw the success of the
cartoons he did for the Canadian government they gladly asked for his help. During the war, the
Disney studio helped to create large numbers of training films, military insignias and propaganda
films for the government and related military industries, without any prompting for the OWI. One
O’Neill, Democracy, 129-152.
32
The term Hollywood, as used in this thesis, refers not to the geographical location of Hollywood but
rather to the community of people that make up the American motion picture industry.
33
Milberg, World War II, 38-55, 90-95.
O’Neill, Democracy, 129-152, 247-266.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, vii-x, 17-47.
Kaplan and Blakley, Warners’ War, 27-37.
Martin Quigley, ‘Mellett Frames New list of Picture War Themes’, Motion Picture Herald, November 28,
1942, 16
24
example of his work is the The New Spirit (War Activities Committee, January 1942) propaganda
movie he made for the Treasury Department. It proved to be very popular with the public, but,
much like the OWI, it received backlash from Congress because it was seen as a waste of money.
While this was not related to the OWI, the Disney studio also did propaganda work for the
OCCCRBAR for Latin America as well as various shorts on the enemy, such as Der Fuehrer’s Face
(RKO, January 1943).34
The Disney studio was not the only one that actively supported the fight against the Nazis. The
Warner Brothers’ studio had pushed for interventionism before the war and was one of the few
studios that did not cower in the face of Hitler’s threats. Many studios preferred to stay away from
serious war subjects before the United States became actively involved in the war. This was due to
fear that they would be shut out of lucrative markets and that there would be reprisals against
European Jews, although the excuse of fairness was also often used. Warner Brothers bravely
forged ahead, mainly due to one of the Warner Brothers, Harry Warner, who had toured Europe
and seen fascism firsthand, an experience that had left him a dedicated anti-fascist. Being Jewish
himself, the way his own employees had been treated in Germany due to anti-Semitism made a
great impression on him. He convinced the other Warner Brothers to support him in his fight
against fascism and in his attempts to convince to rest of Hollywood to follow suit. While most of
Hollywood did not initially join him, the Warner Brothers studio made films such as Confessions of
a Nazi Spy (Warner Brothers, May 1939). This was the first openly anti-Nazi movie from a major
Hollywood studio. It was called propaganda by many of its critics, but Harry Warner did not see it
as propaganda but rather as his obligation which he undertook on a voluntary basis with no help
or suggestions from the government. He said that he just told the truth and that he wanted the
Warner Brothers studio make movies that accurately represent world affairs. Together with Darryl
Zanuck and Samuel Goldwyn, Harry Warner was also one of the major financial contributors to the
Fight for Freedom Committee that advocated interventionism and besides the case of a single
movie that will be examined later, he and Warner Brothers were a major ally for the BMP. They
34
A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Learning from Mickey, Donald and Walt: Essays on Disney’s Edutainment Films
(Jefferson 2011) 15-78.
Shale, Donald Duck, 1-96.
Milberg, World War II, 80-89.
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
25
fought to keep Hollywood making movies that would educate the masses on the needs of the war
and what was important in the war:35
35
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 17-112.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Kaplan and Blakley, Warners’ War, 2-5, 27-70.
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
26
How were the Japanese generally thought of during
the war?
It is easy to say that Japanese enemies were poorly portrayed in propaganda, but it is also
important to know how they were generally thought of. While American culture divided Germans
into Good Germans and Bad Germans (also known as Nazis), the Japanese were just seen as bad.
They were rarely seen as individuals and were frequently portrayed as animals. Comparisons
between Japanese and various species of monkeys were common and appeared in many movies.
The Japanese were frequently portrayed as vermin to be exterminated, especially towards the end
of the war. While an association with an animal is not always bad, consider the lion or the eagle.
The fact is that the Japanese were always associated with stupid, bestial and pestilent animals. In
contrast, such as association was rare for the Germans. Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Allan
Nevins, said after the war that: ‘no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese.’36 The reason
for this was partly due to their portrayal during the war and partly their own actions. They were
portrayed as uncommonly treacherous and savage, a portrayal that was not helped by the fact
that Pearl Harbor was seen by many as a dishonorable betrayal. The way the Japanese treated
their prisoners, and the fact that they fought in the jungles (which were associated with
savageness) rather than in the civilized European cities, certainly did not help. Japanese reliance
on charges and ambush tactics was also generally despised, even though the Americans did the
very same thing and were portrayed as heroic for doing so in their own movies. The Japanese
propaganda also liked to stress the unity of the Japanese people, portraying them as a hundred
million hearts beating as one. This concept of a mass was popularly interpreted in the West as
suggesting that the Japanese lacked individuality. This became twisted into a view that saw them
as a mass of bees or ants namely, as insects to be crushed. Sometimes the Americans could not
decide on the portrayal of the Japanese. Whether they were subhuman or superhuman was a
point of contention, especially near the start of the war. Many felt that a non-white person could
not possibly be a real threat. Even when they had struck at Pearl Harbor this was dismissed as
actually being the work of the Germans, with the Japanese seen as mere puppets. The quantity of
slurs used for the Japanese was massive. In films made during the war that feature Germans, slurs
such as Gerry or Kraut were oddly enough rare. However, insults such as monkey, ape, rising son,
36
John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York 1986) 33.
John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture: The Patterns of War Since the Eighteenth Century
(Philadelphia 2008) 219-231.
27
rat or the ever-present ‘Jap’ however were common. But after the war this all disappeared
surprisingly quickly as the evil monkeys became America’s little monkey buddy.37
The Leatherneck issue of September 1945. It did not take long to change the image from Japan as
evil monkeys and pests, to a little monkey buddy.38
37
Dower, War, 1-93, 118-180.
Wartime Press, The Leatherneck 1945 09’ (Version 5 May 2015) http://www.wartimepress.com/archivepublication.asp?TID=The%20Leatherneck%201945%2009&MID=Leatherneck&q=6872&FID=66 (5 May
2015).
38
28
How did the propagandists of the Office of War
Information work with Hollywood?
The government propagandists’ work in Hollywood started with Lowell Mellett. He was appointed
as the coordinator of government films by Roosevelt on December 17, 1941, shortly after Pearl
Harbor (December 7). The executive order by Roosevelt that appointed him read that ‘motion
pictures could be one of the most effective tools in “informing” the public.’39 As he was still part of
the OGR at the time he created a sub-bureau called the Bureau of Motion Pictures. In April 1942
he set up an office to handle liaison duties and appointed Nelson Poynter as its head. This office
was responsible both for overseeing the (few) war related films that the government made and for
liaising with Hollywood in order to guide the Hollywood studios in aiding the war effort. Mellett
made a deal with Hollywood. His office would be the clearing house for all dealings between the
movie studios and the government and in return the government would respect the commercial
interests of the movie studios. Thus there was cooperation, but no interference with the box
office. This provided more freedom than most entertainment industries got. The government
needed Hollywood, but they realized that too much propaganda would wreck the entertainment
appeal of the movies. If the movies became unattractive for moviegoers this would result in no
audience for the propaganda and no profits for the filmmakers. This was important for the
Hollywood executives, who were fine with cooperating, but did not want to lose their profits. This
was particularly so given that they had already lost a large part of the foreign market with the
entrance of the USA into the war, making what’s left for possible profit avenues even more
important.40
In June 1942, soon after the inception of Mellett’s office, the Office of War Information was
created, and Mellett’s office became a part of it. They saw that Hollywood certainly was happily
making war related movies, such as True to the Army (Paramount, March 1942), Menace of the
Rising Sun (Universal, April 1942), Secret Agent of Japan (Twentieth Century-Fox, April 1942),
Remember Pearl Harbor (Republic, May 1942), Danger in the Pacific (Universal, June 1942), A
39
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 56
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
40
29
Prisoner of Japan (PRC, July 1942), Halfway to Shanghai (Universal, September 1942), The Devil
With Hitler (Hal Roach, October 1942), The Daring Young Man (Columbia, October 1942), The
Yanks Are Coming (PRC, November 1942) and Star Spangled Rhythm (Paramount, December
1942). However, the BMP analysts concluded that these movies would not help to win the war at
all. Dorothy Jones concluded that the films failed to give a true picture of the war. They missed
everything that would help the OWI to explain the war to the people and a serious treatment of
the war issues was nearly nonexistent. These movies used the war as a stage or wartime set but in
the OWI’s opinion, they failed to use it in for any useful propaganda purposes. They adapted old
spy or gangster movies and switched the antagonists for Nazis or Japanese without actually
changing the plot. The Japanese were depicted as ‘fiendish and diabolical’, and as engaging in
sadistic cruelty for no other reason but to satisfy their bloodlust. The enemy was portrayed as
useless and ineffective and able to be defeated by a single hard-boiled hero. Furthermore, the
Chinese were portrayed as silly and ridiculous. Many films perpetuated the ‘stab-in-the-back’
thesis which concluded that the only reason why America was at war was because it had been
attacked by the Japanese. This did not fit with the OWI’s idealistic idea that the USA had entered
the war to improve the world and to fight against fascist ideals. Nelson Poynter concluded that the
studios needed some serious coaching. They set out to discuss feature pictures with the industry
using the OWI’s themes, made lists available for consultation on all pictures, preached daily the
gospel of the OWI ideals and made it clear that they were there to help and not to control.41
The Hollywood men had been willing to listen to BMP advice regarding short movies, but they
feared that incorporating government messages into feature films would hurt their profits. They
were also afraid that the BMP would censor their movies if it became too involved in them.
Considering the role that the Hays office had played, this was possibly somewhat ridiculous.
Moreover, the BMP had no intention of censoring the movies as this would take away their
entertainment value and therefore reduce their effectiveness as propaganda. Poynter began
courting the Hollywood men in May 1942 in the in order to create better Hollywood propaganda.
First, he convinced them that he did not have the power to censor, nor would he try to do that. He
then asked them to incorporate OWI themes into their feature films and asked them if the BMP
could review voluntarily sent scripts before production began, so that they could help. Poynter
41
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81, 248-277.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
Milberg, World War II, 38-79.
Lowell Mellett, Lowell Mellett Explains History of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, NARA II, College Park, MD
ed. Hollywood Goes to War (1942) http://marb.kennesaw.edu/hollywoodandwar/items/show/76. 1-6.
30
started encouraging them to casually insert propaganda into the movies. This included things like
uniformed women in crowd scenes, teenagers participating in war activities such as collecting
scrap in the background, the set displaying war posters and so on. He wanted to make the war
pervasive in the films, showing everyone participating. The fact that not everyone participated in
these activities did not matter, as the OWI wanted an ideal America to be portrayed in which
everyone played their part. He suggested and received ideas for movies in meetings with the
studio heads. These included the evacuation of the Japanese Americans from the West Coast and
the account of a U.S. Ambassador that was sent to the Soviet Union. The first of these suggestions
was to later bring forth quite a lot resentment from the BMP when it was released. One movie
that was used as an example for other movies to emulate was Mrs. Miniver (MGM, June 1942) a
film in which the various classes in England united together for the war. As discussed earlier,
Poynter and his staff assembled the Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture
Industry in order to help the Hollywood executives create the correct presentation of their
subjects in movies. They also asked film makers to consider seven questions:42
1. Will this picture help win the war?
2. What war information problem does it seek to clarify, dramatize or interpret?
3. If it is an “escape” picture, will it harm the war effort by creating a false picture of
America, her allies, or the world we live in?
4. Does it merely use the war as the basis for a profitable picture, contributing nothing of
real significance to the war effort and possibly lessening the effect of other pictures of
more importance?
5. Does it contribute something new to our understanding of the world conflict and the
various forces involved, or has the subject already been adequately covered?
42
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, viii-x 48-81, 248-277.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
Milberg, World War II, 38-55.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
OWI and BMP, Manual, 1-167.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
31
6. When the picture reaches its maximum circulation on the screen, will it reflect
conditions as they are and fill a need current at that time, or will it be out-dated [sic]?
7. Does the picture tell the truth or will the young people of today have reason to say they
were misled by propaganda?43
Clear evidence can be seen here of the OWI ideals, with its emphasis on educating the people and
telling the truth. A reaction to the Hollywood films that had already been released can also be
seen in points three and four, which bring to mind films such as Halfway to Shanghai and the
musicals True to the Army, The Yanks Are Coming and Star Spangled Rhythm which ridiculed the
Chinese allies and merely used the war as a background respectively.44
These measures were well received in Hollywood at the time. They publically hailed the manual
and the BMP suggestions in a burst of patriotism and in appreciation of the recognition from the
Government that it represented. They also gave serious consideration of the subjects presented
within the manual. The opportunity to take on serious subjects was particularly appreciated
among the more leftist and liberal parts of Hollywood. However, whether this would lead to the
sort of movies that the OWI wanted is another matter, as can be seen in the debacle of Little
Tokyo, U.S.A.45 (Twentieth Century-Fox, August 1942).46
During World War II the American government had detained the Japanese American population
and interned them in camps. This was explained either by accusing the whole population of being
saboteurs and spies or by saying that it was for their own protection. Whatever the case, it was
undeniable that the treatment of the Japanese American population was vastly different from the
treatment of the German Americans and Italian Americans. This was despite the fact that there
had been no proof of Japanese sabotage on American continental soil while there had been
German sabotage. Twentieth Century-Fox was, possibly correctly, convinced that the internment
would make a good subject for a serious war movie and Little Tokyo, U.S.A. was the result. It had
43
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 66-67.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Milberg, World War II, 38-79.
45
Note that I have not seen the film myself, All information relating to this film dependent upon secondary
sources.
46
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
44
32
even obtained approval from the War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations before filming,
which ensured that it contained nothing offensive to the Army. The Army had also cooperated by
allowing filming of the actual evacuation of Japanese American citizens. But this was not enough
to ensure that the OWI would think that it was a good movie. Dorothy Jones said about the film:
‘Virtually everything in it, is calculated to shiver the well-sensitized spines of the Office of War
Information.’47 This it certainly did. The film presents every single Japanese American as a FifthColumnist, just waiting to betray the USA, thus further reinforcing the ‘stab-in-the-back’ thesis.
The heroic detective who is the main character blatantly ignores the Bill of Rights, breaking and
entering Japanese homes whenever he pleases, and beats up unarmed men who had already
surrendered. The Japanese are all, to a man, portrayed according to oriental stereotypes. They can
barely speak English, are as unified as a colony of ants and are dressed in traditional garb. The only
Japanese American who is not an evil stereotype is quickly murdered and removed from the
picture.48
The BMP needed to react to the film. The review staff hated the film and, while Poynter was not as
apprehensive of the film as his staff had been, he still was not a fan of it. The War Relocation
Authority, which was responsible for the Japanese Americans during and after the war, was not
happy with the film either as it felt that it complicated their work. The decision was made to ask
Twentieth Century-Fox to change certain aspects of the film, in order to ensure that the film points
out that there were a large number of loyal Japanese Americans. The studio made a few of the
changes suggested by the OWI, but replied saying that the film only intended to make the
audience hate the disloyal Japanese and that it had already been approved by the Army. Most of
the more serious changes were not made as Twentieth Century-Fox reacted with bewilderment to
the commentary and refused to comply. In addition some things were also impossible to change,
as the actress who had given the final speech in the movie, which the BMP had objected to, had
become pregnant. It was not surprising that Twentieth Century-Fox reacted in the way it did. After
47
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 72.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81, 248-277.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
MacDougall, ‘Red, Brown and Yellow’, 59-73.
Milberg, World War II, 38-55.
Brian Niiya, ‘Little Tokyo U.S.A. (film)’ (version 6 May 2015),
http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Little_Tokyo_U.S.A._%28film%29/ (9 May 2015).
Allan M. Winkler, Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II, (Arlington Heights 1986) 70-74.
Fraser A. Sherman, Screen Enemies of the American Way: Political Paranoia About Nazis, Communists,
Saboteurs, Terrorists and Body Snatching Aliens in Film and Television, (Jefferson 2011) 27-43.
48
33
all, nothing in the film actually contradicted government policy, even though it contradicted the
OWI ideals. The Japanese Americans were interned and government officials had portrayed them
as traitors after all. In fact, a quote from a government official painting them all as traitors was
even in the film. The OWI might hate the racism in the film, but that racism was the very thing that
had led to the internment. The idealistic OWI vision did not agree with reality or with the truth.49
This taught the BMP an important lesson, namely, that they needed to change the way they
worked with Hollywood in order to be effective. They needed to see scripts before shooting if they
wanted to change the content. However, even that was no guarantee, as they had no real power
to force a change to the scripts. An example of this was Air Force (Warner Brothers, February
1943)50 that had a script filled with anti-Japanese elements that the reviewers hated. However,
the Air Force had approved the film and thus the normally cooperative Warner Brothers studio
made a movie that the BMP did not approve of. They had more success with Tennessee Johnson
(MGM, December 1942), the first film that had a changed script thanks to BMP influence. This film
had threatened national unity by tackling the sensitive issue of slavery and the South. The African
American population had been feeling mistreated during the war and a considerable amount of
them had felt sympathy for the Japanese. This context made it advisable to avoid such a subject.
The BMP criticized the film and managed to use its influence to erase most references to black
people and to slavery. Instead of fostering unity by helping the African-Americans, the BMP and
Hollywood men tended to react by removing them from the films instead. There were also some
movies made by those who had picked up on what the BMP wanted. Several films were released
that took subjects right out of the manual such as Pittsburgh (Universal, December 1942) and
Keeper of The Flame (MGM, March 1943). These were obvious propaganda and provided poor
entertainment, leading to little success at either.51
49
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-81, 248-277.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
MacDougall, ‘Red, Brown and Yellow’, 59-73.
Milberg, World War II, 38-55.
Brian Niiya, ‘Little Tokyo U.S.A. (film)’ (version 6 May 2015),
http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Little_Tokyo_U.S.A._%28film%29/ (9 May 2015).
Sherman, Screen, 27-43.
50
It had been in production since 18 May 1942.
51
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-112.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
34
One of the most severe cases of BMP meddling was So Proudly We Hail! (Paramount, June 1943).
For this movie, Nelson Poynter went so far as to write speeches for the characters in the film. They
were nearly unusable and were obviously preachy propaganda. The OWI’s influence can also be
seen in the treatment of the allied nations. There is an amusing exchange in the movie in which
one of the nurses treats an allied Chinese soldier named Ling Chee as a simpleton and he then
proceeds to surprise her by being very eloquent. The Japanese fared considerably worse and no
evidence can be found of the BMP improving their portrayal. They exist only as malevolent
shadows, never speaking and never showing mercy to the unarmed women, children and
wounded men who make up the movie’s cast. The nurses of the film also have a pet monkey,
appropriately called Tojo ‘because they looked so alike’. Despite earlier protests this was clearly
not seen as important enough to change compared to inserting long and rambling speeches.
Interestingly enough, there is also a scene in which a nurse commits a suicide attack, carrying a
grenade while pretending to surrender. In this film it is portrayed as heroic, while in many films
such acts by the Japanese are portrayed as a deceitful. Poynter could not resist praising his own
work and called the film beautiful. The film was reasonably well received by the public, but many
in Hollywood and the OWI felt that Poynter had gone too far by explicitly writing parts of the
script, rather than sticking to suggestions. This also contributed to the coming crisis.52
Mellett and Poynter realized that if they saw the scripts before shooting they could make them
considerably better. In many cases however they lacked the power to make the desired changes.
They had an idea to use a representative from the OWI’s overseas branch in order to bolster the
BMP’s power. This would enable them to threaten to censor and even to ban the movies for
export if they had unapproved themes. After all, an overseas representative would provide them
with the excuse that the movie could hurt the war effort if broadcasted abroad. Although the
enemy nations had severely reduced the size of the foreign market, it still made the difference
between profit and loss for many movies, thus making it an effective threat. The number of
soldiers stationed abroad helped to make up for the loss of those countries lost to the enemy and
provided up to 150 million viewers per year. The overseas representative would be Ulric Bell, who
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Amana, ‘Art’, 79-108.
52
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 82-112.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Mark Sandrich, So Proudly We Hail!, United States (Paramount Pictures) 1943.
Dower, War, 33-73.
35
had also been the executive chairman of the Fight For Freedom Committee. He began this new
task November 1942.53
With Ulric Bell boosting the confidence of the BMP, they moved to acquire more power and this
led to a conflict between Hollywood and the BMP. It began when Mellett started attacking double
bills (the practice of showing two films after one another) for wasting resources and screen time
for informational shorts. He also demanded ‘better’ movies, by which he meant movies that would
be more intelligent and would represent the war better, without reducing it to simplistic
stereotypes and stories. Hollywood reacted by saying that they were best at doing what they did
and that the BMP’s interference would help no one. Mellett ignored the backlash and proceeded
to send a letter to all the studios on December, 9, 1942. In it he advised the studios that, ‘it would
be advisable to establish routine procedure whereby our Hollywood office would receive copies of
studio treatments or of synopses of all stories which you contemplate producing and of the
finished scripts’ for review.54 He also asked for permission for the BMP to screen pictures in the
long cut, so that they could recommend the cutting of any material that had been filmed despite
earlier advice to the contrary by the BMP. Finally, he asked them to channel all contacts with the
armed forces and with foreign governments through the BMP. The military had been a constant
thorn in the flesh of the BMP since it allowed the studios to ignore BMP criticism. After all, the
military was quite happy to work with whichever studio portrayed it positively, and it did not care
about the OWI ideals. With these demands, Mellett sought to gain unprecedented control of
Hollywood.55
While no studios gave an official response, the chatter in Hollywood certainly indicated shock
among the studios. Many saw this as a step towards blanket censorship. Elmer Davis defended the
OWI by saying that it had no such authority, but Hollywood did not trust the OWI. For example,
53
Kaplan and Blakley, Warners’ War, 60-70.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 48-112.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
John Simkin, ‘Fight for Freedom’ (version 21 april 2015) http://spartacus-educational.com/SPYfreedom.htm
(9 May 2015).
Martin Quigley, ‘Mellett Frames New list of Picture War Themes’, Motion Picture Herald, November 28,
1942, 16
54
Martin Quigley, ‘’Censorship Jitters Just Teapot Tempest’ –Mellett’, Motion Picture Herald, December 26,
1942, 18.
55
Martin Quigley, ‘OWI on DOUBLE BILLS, Motion Picture Herald, November 21, 1942, 7.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 82-142.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
36
The Motion Picture Herald included this unsourced quote: ‘On the other hand, by an Executive
Order of last June the OWI has full authority and intends to exert it to supervise all films
sponsored by the Federal Government and its agencies.’56 The studios teamed up to oppose
Mellett’s demands and were joined by Gardner Cowles Jr., the previously mentioned conservative
member of the OWI. He agreed with the Hollywood men that Mellett’s letter could be construed
as an attempt at censorship. This broke the unified OWI front that Mellett and Poynter had sought
to create in order to exert pressure on Hollywood. Cowles had personal connections within
Hollywood and these connections insisted that there was an almost unanimous opinion among the
important producers of Hollywood that Mellett and Poynter were incompetent and had to go.
Walter Wanger, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was one of the
critics and had a considerable amount of criticism that can be seen as summing up most of
criticism coming from Hollywood. He said that Hollywood should not be dominated and controlled
by men who know nothing of movies, and compared them to Goebbels and the disaster he
created when he tried to make the perfect film for Alsace-Lorraine. He argued that such meddling
would lead to perfect propaganda films, but horrible entertainment films, which would result in
the propaganda films having no audience. He said that meddling such as requesting specific
changes to the script (as seen in So Proudly We Hail!) was incredibly unpopular in Hollywood and
served no one except for the dreams of the BMP men who would get their dream scripts filmed.
He also criticized the way in which the BMP treated the audience. He claimed that they wanted
everything spelled out in their movies because they think of the audience as idiots (which was
quite ironic, considering the OWI ideals), while the Hollywood men are able to convey their
message far more subtly and without boring the audience. Furthermore, he said that the BMP
men had no understanding of the Hollywood scene, giving the example of Eagle Squadron
(Universal, June 1942). While he felt that this movie that he produced conveyed the theme of
unity between the Americans and English quite well, the BMP men did not get the message and
sent him a message asking him to make a film with that very subject as a matter of urgency shortly
after its release because they had apparently missed the theme. In the end, his criticism together
with the criticism of the majority of angry Hollywood executives came down to the fact that they
56
Martin Quigley, ‘’Censorship Jitters Just Teapot Tempest’ –Mellett’, Motion Picture Herald, December 26,
1942, 18.
37
believed the BMP men to be incompetent. Moreover, they wanted replacements from within the
Hollywood world itself. 57
One point of criticism that Wanger does address but that frequently appeared from within the
ranks of the conservative executives is that they were not happy with the liberalism of the two
men. By the time this conflict ended in early 1943 Hollywood had won the battle, but lost the war.
They managed to severely reduce Poynter and Mellett’s clout, but in doing so they provided a
chance for Ulric Bell, who had been brought in because of his connections in the Office of
Censorship, to move to the forefront of the BMP and take over. The result of this would later be
felt by Hollywood. For the time being however, all the studios except Paramount (which had been
wounded by So Proudly We Hail!) went back to sending in their scripts. Despite their protesting,
the actual production of movies improved considerably in relation to OWI themes. The treatment
of (non-Japanese) foreigners improved noticeably for one thing. Constant insistence had paid off
and many war movies now showcased foreign resistance movements or began to include the now
well-known trope of an ethnically diverse squad of soldiers.58
While the fight with Hollywood was going on, another war was being fought on American soil.
While the BMP had already tried to gain power over Hollywood by attempting to ask the studios
to go through them in order to communicate with the military, the OWI went after the military
itself. The military never cared as much about ideals as the OWI did. They cared solely about
military matters, such as ensuring that no state secrets were given away through the movies. As
long as the military was positively and accurately portrayed, they were happy to approve and
cooperate, something we have already seen could be used to deflect BMP criticism. The BMP tried
to get the studios to only communicate with them, but the studios kept sending their scripts to the
military as the potential savings from military help were too big to ignore. The rivalry between the
propaganda and military agencies was so extreme that even the president took notice, writing a
57
Martin Quigley, ‘’Censorship Jitters Just Teapot Tempest’ –Mellett’, Motion Picture Herald, December 26,
1942, 18.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 82-112.
Wanger ‘Motion Pictures’, 100-110.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Milberg, World War II, 38-55.
58
Martin Quigley, ‘’Censorship Jitters Just Teapot Tempest’ –Mellett’, Motion Picture Herald, December 26,
1942, 18.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 82-112.
Wanger ‘Motion Pictures’, 100-110.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Milberg, World War II, 38-55.
38
letter that implied that the government agencies should work together with the OWI. Like the
fight the BMP had with the Hollywood executives, this one also ended somewhat anticlimactically.
By early 1943 a deal was made allowing the OWI to share in the responsibilities of the Army and
the Navy (the Air Force appears to have stayed away from the internal fighting). All Hollywood
material would be send to both the BMP and to the relevant military branch. No real practical
results emerged from this but it gave Hollywood more reasons to fear BMP meddling. However,
the conflict between the BMP and the army over the Why We Fight series was to reassure many in
Hollywood. The Army wanted to release the first part of this Frank Capra series, Prelude to War
(War Department, original release May 1942, public theater release March 1943) into the
cinemas. However, the BMP fought against this as Mellett saw it as running counter to OWI
themes; it would take valuable screen time away from BMP approved movies and possibly fatally
destroy the BMP’s cooperation with Hollywood as it would interfere with the box office. While the
civilian agency could not beat the military machine, they managed to drag out the release for so
long that by the time it was released, no one cared about the outdated war movie, which led to it
being a box office failure. This was a victory for Hollywood, as people would rather see current
movies. It was also a victory for the BMP since it had shown itself to be a defender of Hollywood.59
Ulric Bell used this and his newfound prominence to increase his power. He was helped in this by a
new code issued by the Office of Censorship on December, 11, 1942. This banned from export
films that showed rationing or other economic preparations for the war, scenes of lawlessness in
which order was not restored and the offenders punished as well as portrayals of labor or class
conflict in the USA that took place after 1917. Not wanting to run afoul of the Censor, no one in
Hollywood dared to protest the code. It would not lead to much censorship for the time being as
the Office of Censorship was still wary of acting too sharply and was in general quite forgiving.
Poynter also had to be considered still and he was strongly against censorship. Bell and Poynter
clashed for some time about several films that Bell wanted censored, such as Mr. Lucky (RKO, May
1943). This was an essentially harmless movie about a smalltime crook who turned around for the
better and came to help the war effort. However, Bell preferred to not acknowledge the existence
of smalltime crooks and therefore wanted it banned. Bell was not successful in these fights, but
events in Washington would lead to his victory. As previously discussed a shift occurred in the OWI
59
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 113-141.
Winkler, Politics, 1-7.
Dower, War, 15-32.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
39
in 1943. The idealist faction lost ground to the pragmatists and budget cuts led to further losses
for the idealists, which included Nelson Poynter and Lowell Mellett who both ended up leaving.
Mellett’s position was filled by Stanton Griffis, chairman of Paramount’s executive committee,
who made the domestic operation harmless for Hollywood. However, this was no victory for
Hollywood, as the review staff escaped his rule and came under the authority of Ulric Bell of the
overseas branch. From mid-1943, Ulric Bell had the (censorship) authority of the foreign branch
and the Office of Censorship (which after some pressure was now largely on the same line) as well
as the review staff at his disposal. He was also free from the Poynter’s opposition. He had both the
stick of censorship and the carrot of the lucrative foreign markets that were being freed and would
be freed from the Axis and the soldiers stationed abroad which fell under the domain of the
overseas branch. Using this power, he could control Hollywood and Hollywood gladly stepped in
line. In the end, the promise of foreign profits won out over the ideals of freedom of speech and
freedom of the screen.60
In the period from September 1943 to August 1944 (which is where the BMP’s records end), the
agency read 190 scripts and managed to change the parts they objected to in 71% of those scripts.
This represented quite a change from their earlier history, when they struggled with every single
movie. Ulric Bell’s takeover resulted in a compliant Hollywood and an effective BMP.61 This is not
to say that the improved BMP influence led to good movies, and one only has to look at the
example of Wilson (Twentieth Century-Fox, August 1944) to prove the opposite. They thought that
they had created a movie that was perfect in the BMP’s opinion, touching many of its major
themes. In reality, however, while Wilson was a minor box office success, it failed to entertain the
audiences and the critics and it also failed to accomplish the propaganda goals it had been created
to achieve. This was because its plot was two dimensional and it failed to elucidate some of the
very questions it brought up. Instead of this, it focused on scenes that were irrelevant for
propaganda in an attempt to bring some measure of entertainment to the audience. Hollywood
gladly went along with the BMP and the BMP gladly put its resources into the film. While this
60
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 113-141.
Winkler, Politics, 38-72.
O’Neill, Democracy, 129-152.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
61
Somewhere in the period between September 1943 and July 1944 (which is when he shows up in a BMP
review as the head), William Cunningham replaced Bell as head of the BMP. However, none of the
resources I have mention much else about the man, nor have I seen any change in BMP policy after that
time. It can be presumed that he followed in Bell’s footsteps and kept his way of working.
40
showed that cooperation had been achieved, it did not mean that that cooperation would lead to
good propaganda. When the war ended the BMP and Hollywood were united in creating films for
the country. But this would soon end after the war, with the OWI (and therefore also the BMP)
being dissolved thirteen days after the end of the war and many of the Hollywood men who had
cooperated with it being prosecuted for communist tendencies. An era had ended.62
62
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 278-328.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Milberg, World War II, 96-113.
Koppes ‘What to Show the World’, 87-105.
Kaplan and Blakley, Warners’ War, 1-5.
41
How can influence of the Office of War Information
propagandists be seen in the movies?
While the previous chapter provided a timeline showing how OWI involvement in film propaganda
changed during the war, this chapter takes a deeper look at the movies in order to see how
successful they were at achieving their goals. The previous chapter examined certain movies for
narrative purposes, but I now want to look at some of the movies the OWI had a hand in that did
not play a major role in the evolution the agency. In this chapter, I will examine to what extent the
OWI’s ideals were visible in the movies they were involved in. To accomplish this, I watched a
selection of movies, which I analyze in this chapter. The main subject for consideration is the
treatment of the enemy in these films. That enemy is often the Japanese, simply because their
portrayal represented the most radical departure from the OWI’s ideals. The depiction of the
Japanese is troublesome. This not so much because it was racist. It was after all a different era and
this makes it difficult to fault movies for language such as ‘Jap’, although the frequent
comparisons to animals and vermin to be slaughtered are disturbing. That was simply the reality
and it would be ridiculous to expect no racial slurs at a time when they were openly spoken. Nor is
it so much because they are depicted committing war crimes and various devious acts. They did
commit war crimes, ambush tactics were common and the stereotype of the false surrender did
not emerge out of nowhere. But what is disturbing is the almost total lack of Japanese who do not
fit a stereotype. While many films that dealt with the Nazis ensured that they portrayed both good
Germans and bad Germans (the Nazis) as did the few films that dealt with Italians, this was not the
case with the Japanese. Nor were the Germans and Italians presented in a dehumanizing way.
While they were mostly bad guys, they were still human. However, the portrayal of Japanese often
compared them to apes or to vermin that had to be exterminated. I used a few criteria in choosing
what films to watch and analyze. The first was availability. If I was unable to procure the movie, I
would not be able to analyze it. The second reason was importance. Some films were either very
controversial or very popular. An example of a popular film is Bataan (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
June 1943) which both was a box office hit and has been the topic of considerable discussion in
secondary literature. A third reason for choosing films was because they serve as examples that
42
allow me to showcase and demonstrate certain points. An example of this is Behind the Rising Sun
(RKO, August 1943), which was chosen for the unique way it portrays the Japanese.63
The first movie to consider is Our Enemy: The Japanese (OWI, 1943). Because of opposition from
Congress and Hollywood, there were only a few official propaganda films made for domestic
consumption and this was one of them. It was produced by the Office of War Information
(presumably by the BMP branch of the OWI) in cooperation with the US Navy. Distribution was
handled by the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry. The film is narrated by
authority figure Joseph Clark Grew, who was Ambassador to Japan from 1932 until the attack on
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, after which he was interned for nine months before being
returned to the United States. The film was intended as a training film for men enlisted in the Navy
rather than for the general public and so is not a ‘real’ propaganda films as others are. However,
given that the film was not made in cooperation with Hollywood but only by the OWI, it should
showcase OWI ideals. 64
This twenty-minute short effectively uses the enemy’s own footage against them. Almost all of the
film is made up of footage filmed by the Japanese themselves. In some ways the movie is
commendable. It clearly seeks to enable the viewer to understand the Japanese and spends a
surprising amount of time on living conditions, economic and industrial circumstances and
education. However, despite being an OWI production, it is far from spotless. It describes the
Japanese as a disciplined race who are unfeelingly stoic, as well as being primitive, murderous and
fanatical. They are presented as being trained from youth to lose their individuality and to serve
the emperor as one mass in his destiny to rule the world. It calls the Japanese an unfeeling and
uncreative race, and claims that they never invented anything themselves and always relied on the
West. It also focuses to some extent on Shinto mysticism, which it presents as an alien religion
that glorifies sacrifice through combat and world conquest and that encourages the slaughter of
innocents and the destruction of cities. The narrator provides one explanation for all of this, which
63
Dower, War, 1-14, 77-93.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-316.
64
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
Office of War Information, Our Enemy: The Japanese, United States (War Activities Committee of the
Motion Picture Industry) 1943.
43
is that, while their weapons may be modern, their thinking is still primitive and two thousand
years out of date.65
There are some amusing ironies in this film. One is that the narrator states that Americans must be
willing to make total sacrifices for victory, something the Japanese were often scolded for.
Another irony is that it ridicules the freedom of the press in Japan. It states that Japanese losses
are never reported, while the very American Navy that sponsored this movie did the same thing. It
was not until James Forrestal’s appointment as secretary in 1944 that the Navy started reliably
reporting its losses. Viewed overall this movie accomplishes its tasks quite competently. It both
educates and propagandizes the viewer. However, the OWI ideals fare poorly. While it does treat
its audience as intelligent and attempts to educate them, little remains of the ideal that it was not
a race war. The movie clearly condemns the Japanese as a race.66 Its release date of 1943 is
ambiguous as that was an important time in the development of the way that the OWI acted, and
this makes it difficult to say whether its presentation of the enemy was business as usual or an
unusual example of hypocrisy. The fact is that from late 1943 until the end of the war the OWI had
largely given up criticizing the portrayal of the Japanese in media. This was due to a combination
of the weakening of its ideals and its reviewers supposedly coming to terms with the futility of
trying to convince a racist society not to be racist (although I do not quite agree with this
explanation).67
Before discussing the movies that were influenced by the BMP but not made by them, it is a good
idea to take a look at the BMP’s review process. When possible, all films where reviewed several
times. Before shooting they reviewed the script and after shooting they reviewed the film. I am
dependent on secondary sources for most reviews given that they are buried in an archive in the
United States, but I did manage to find one review. It is not the most relevant review, for the
purpose of this thesis, but it serves to illustrate what the review process was like. The review in
question is for the classic movie Casablanca (Warner Brothers, premiere November 1942, general
release January 1943). The film review starts by giving some facts such as which studio produced it
and will be releasing it, what the scheduled release date is, who the writers and producers are,
and what reviewers saw it and where and when they saw it. It also includes a grade that clarifies
65
OWI, Our Enemy.
During World War II the Japanese were often viewed by Americans as a seperate race from, for example,
the Chinese or other Asians.
67
OWI, Our Enemy.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277.
66
44
the score that the reviewer gave to the movie. The reviewer in this case is Lillian Bergquist who
viewed it on October 28, 1942. It was also viewed by Nelson Poynter, Dorothy Jones and Marjorie
Thorson on October 26. All of them viewed the movie at the Warner Brothers’ studio. It is
interesting to note that there is some doubt about the grade given to the movie, which says ‘( A ) B
Not clear’. It is clear that, while the reviewers agreed that it was a good movie, there was some
debate about how good it was. Finally, the fact sheet part of the review contains a classification on
the sort of themes that it handles. It is classified as ‘Major: III B (United Nations – Conquered
Nations) Drama’, which means that the major theme of the movie is that it shows the lives of
people from nations that have been conquered by the enemy, together with their resistance
against the Axis. An example of this in the film is Victor Laszlo, the Czech Patriot. This movie also
has the classification ‘Minor: II C 3 (Enemy – Military) Drama’, which means that it includes the
portrayal of the enemy military as a minor theme in this case with Major Strasser. After this, it
provides a summary of the movie’s plot before continuing to the review. As can be expected from
the grade, the review is very positive, describing it as a ‘very good picture about the enemy, those
whose lives the enemy has wrecked and those underground agents who fight him unremittingly
on his own ground. The war content is dramatically effective.’ It then continues to discuss seven
different specific points of critique. Had the movie not succeeded in portraying OWI themes, this is
presumably where the review would have given specific criticisms. However, since they like the
movie, this section is all praise. They call it an excellent picture of the spirit of the underground
movement, and say that it succeeds in graphically illustrating some of the chaos and misery
brought by fascism and war. That it successfully shows that personal desires must be subordinated
to the task of defeating fascism, and provides evidence that, despite the existence of the Vichy,
the French are not wholeheartedly cooperating with the Nazis. Moreover, it shows America as the
haven of the oppressed and homeless. It provides some elucidation of the scope of the present
conflict, showing that the roots of the war lie further back than its actual outbreak. Finally, it gives
a good portrayal of the typical Nazi. Thus we see that the reviewers were understandably not
really interested in things such as entertainment value or the quality of the film, but rather
focused on how well it related to the OWI themes. Given that the film did this well, the reviewers
are pleased, but other films do not fare so well.68
Prisoner of Japan (Atlantis Pictures, July 1942) had been released before the BMP began
functioning well. All that the OWI said about it after its release was that in it the enemy kills ‘for no
68
Lillian Bergquist, Bureau of Motion Picture Review of Casablanca, NARA II, College Park, MD ed.
Hollywood Goes to War (1942) http://marb.kennesaw.edu/hollywoodandwar/items/show/74 1-3.
45
apparent reason other than to satisfy their blood-lust’. It is therefore a movie that is free of OWI
influence. The film is about the main character, who is a slacker and lives on a tropical island. He
must overcome his apathy in order to fight against the local Japanese who are using the island as a
radio post. This is a slow, plodding film that seems to need to repeat each of its points several
times. The points it makes were outdated even at the time of its release, and focused on providing
reasons to join the fight for its laidback loser of a main character and the audience. However, the
Americans had already joined the fight by then, making the whole plot line rather redundant. In
the film, the enemy is led by a supposedly intelligent Japanese man, who is oddly enough played
by a German actor with an almost unintelligible German accent. He ends up not doing much,
except for repeatedly taunting the protagonist, thus convincing him to join the fight. While he is
portrayed as at least somewhat competent at what he does, having set up an undercover radio
station, the rest of the Japanese that he leads are portrayed as ineffectual bare-chested men.
Their biggest accomplishments are dying, murdering a child for no reason, executing a prisoner
and shooting an unarmed woman in the back. The movie also contains the standard number of
slurs, although it appears that they had not quite decided which ones were the ‘good’ ones, as
there is a great variety of them not seen in later movies. This movie was largely just a standard spy
movie that was poorly adapted to a Pacific Island setting. No real understanding of the war can be
gained by it. The main antagonist is somewhat notable for being more intelligent and competent
than most Japanese in movies, but if one takes into consideration the need for a somewhat
intelligent enemy in the spy movie genre and his general failing to actually accomplish anything
onscreen this is hardly notable. I could find no professional reviews of the film.69
69
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 254.
Arthur Ripley, Prisoner of Japan, United States (Atlantis Pictures) 1942.
46
Japanese Soldiers trying and failing to open the door to their radio post. You would think they had
a spare key.70
Bataan (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, June 1943) is an early example of a film heavily influenced by the
BMP. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had begun discussing the movie with the BMP early in production
and a complete script was submitted in September 1942. Overall, the BMP was quite pleased with
the results of their collaboration. The BMP reviewers noted that it portrayed the army well,
showing it be both democratic (with officers willing to listen to their subordinates) and racially
integrated, which was an outright lie given that the army was not at all integrated in reality. The
squad which makes up the focus of the film is diverse, consisting of Protestants, Catholics and
Jews, as well as white people, a black person, a Latino person and two Filipino men. They also all
come from different branches and professions. Not only was this movie noticeable for being
racially integrated, but it also portrayed more equality in the relationships between these men
than existed in reality. The movie does a good job at portraying them overcoming their differences
and uniting for the war, something that the BMP reviewers recognized. The black soldier, Private
Wesley Epps is shown as competent and equal to the white men. The others are portrayed as
considerate to him, with one of them offering to relieve his watch so that he could eat. He is also
70
Ripley, Prisoner.
47
the only character in the movie who does not use racial slurs when referring to the enemy. Most
importantly, he was not a stereotype, but just a normal man. The actor who played him, Kenneth
Spencer, called it the most satisfying role in his career. The OWI was happy with the portrayal of
Epps as it was anxious to court the African American population and he was well received by the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It certainly helped that he is seen to
put his faith in the United States. However, the Filipinos, while they are portrayed as brave, mainly
serve as potential casualties and are barely equipped with personalities. While Yankee Salazar
(note the name Yankee, which signifies his status as a friend of Americans, or perhaps even as
American in spirit) has something of a personality and history as a boxer, Corporal Juan Katigbak
barely has a role in the film. He is found dead about halfway through the film after being
murdered off-screen with a samurai sword. That is the only memorable part of his role in the film
and one does not even see his body. However, this was nevertheless an improvement on the
original script in which both characters remained in the background. The BMP involvement
ensured that at least one of them had a personality and that they both displayed loyalty and a
willingness to fight. This certainly shows the BMP was able to change characters in films for the
better. The film was described by Bell as making an especially good contribution to the war
through its handling of the allies.71
71
Tay Garnett, Bataan, United States (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) 1943.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
48
Private Epps is shown as an equal in the film, conversing and smiling with the others.72
However, the Japanese foe does not fare as well as the black, Latino and Filipino men do. While
the OWI had said that they wanted the enemy to be portrayed in a way that showed them as
more than just men with guns and no motive, character or backstory other than the will to kill
Americans, this is exactly how they are portrayed in the movie. Despite this, the BMP review found
no fault with the portrayal and called it accurate. The film does not hesitate to use racist language
and the very first conversation in the movie compares a shot monkey to a ‘Jap’. The Japanese are
also referred to as monkeys, baboons without a tail, yellow-skinned slant-eyed devils and
treacherous devils. They are also shown to be brutal, using melee weapons and lynching to depose
of their enemies. It is noteworthy that all of the more brutal deaths, whether a samurai sword to
the chest, a decapitation and a hanging that serves to evoke lynching, occur to the non-white
members of the American squad. These deaths were especially violent for the period. The film
wisely shied away from portraying Epps as the hanged victim. By using Yankee Salazar instead, it
did not make the comparison to the lynchings that were occurring in America too obvious. Instead
the film uses the lynching to showcase the brutality of Japanese treatment of other Asians. At the
72
Garnett, Bataan.
49
same time, it makes sure the white Americans disavow it, with one white American soldier
breaking down and repeating to himself ‘dirty, dirty, dirty’. The white men nearly all die being shot
and in combat, although the tactics vary from normal gunfights to more treacherous methods for
achieving the kill, such as pretending to surrender and then stabbing at the man who stays his
bayonet. The exception to this is Corporal Barney Todd, the cynic of the movie. He is portrayed as
constantly complaining, but has a redemptive scene shortly before his death where he fights off
several Japanese soldiers on his own, before being punished for his earlier deeds by being stabbed
in the back while looting those soldiers. (A fitting fate, as his cynicism served to stab the American
morale in the back.) One of the soldiers had pretended to be dead and was able to dole out the
punishment Todd deserved for being a cynic. He was seen as a hazard for unity according to the
BMP, and so he could not be let off without punishment. Since Bataan was a loss for the
Americans, the movie could not show it as a victory. Yet it could hardly suggest that everything
that occurred in the movie was for nothing. It solved this problem by ending the movie with the
last surviving American, Sergeant Bill Dane who had been the moral compass of the movie,
shooting wildly at the Japanese. It then fades out to a final story board that relates that their
sacrifices made possible the victories in the Coral and Bismarck Seas, at Midway, on New Guinea
and on Guadalcanal. Therefore, the battle for Bataan was not a loss, but merely a sacrifice that
would bring about later victories. Sacrifices like this were something that the Japanese would
receive considerable hatred for during the war, but here it was portrayed as heroism. In
conclusion, the movie is an effective piece of propaganda that serves to encourage unity among
Americans and solidarity with American allies (in this case the Filipinos). Poynter called it a
wonderfully useful picture. However despite being released during the rule of Poynter, who said
that he tried to encourage a more balanced picture of the enemy, it does no such thing. Nor did
the BMP particularly care about this. The movie was rewarded with mixed reviews from critics, but
was a box office hit. However, it was not screened in the American South because of its positive
depiction of integration.73
73
Garnett, Bataan.
Locke, Racial, 15-36.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277.
Shindler, Films, 38-56.
O’Neill, Democracy, 105-127.
Bosley Crowther, ‘‘Bataan (1943) ‘Bataan,’ Film of Heroic Defense of Peninsula, Starring Robert Taylor,
Robert Walker and Thomas Mitchell, at Capitol’, The New York Times, 4 June 1943.
50
In this picture the aftermath of the gruesome, dirty death of Yankee Salazar is shown74
The second movie to consider is Guadalcanal Diary (Twentieth Century Fox, October 1943). While
the BMP meddled quite a lot with Bataan, this film did not receive many objections from BMP in
the scripting stage. One significant issue was that the screenplay used a priest to tell the troops
that they were fighting a righteous war and that a righteous nation was ‘economically sound,
politically sound and spiritually unassailable.’75 The BMP was not in favor of this speech as some of
its allies such as China could hardly be seen as economically and politically stable. The OWI did not
want to encourage doubt about its allies, no matter how far the viewer would have to reach to
come to that conclusion. As with many problematic parts of movies, the problem was solved by
being written out. Apart from that issue, the BMP reviewers praised the film for being realistic and
of outstanding quality. They praised the portrayal of the enemy who were presented as
formidable, but not supermen. There had been some trouble in finding a balanced way to
represent the enemy: early on (and especially before they actually attacked Pearl Harbor) the
Japanese were often portrayed as weak and ineffectual, while the shock of Pearl Harbor had given
Variety Staff, ‘Review: ‘Bataan’’, Variety, 31 December 1943.
74
Garnett, Bataan.
75
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 260.
51
birth to a new portrayal, of the Japanese as supermen. The BMP reviewers thought this film
created a good balance by portraying them as formidable. Finally, they praised it for the way in
which the American soldiers in the film portrayed a good cross-section of the nation and
recommended it for distribution abroad (the carrot that the studios eagerly worked for). Non BMP
reviewers gave it mixed reviews. Some described it as a good honest and realistic tribute to the
soldiers of Guadalcanal, while others attacked it for being unrealistic and failing to accurately
portray the desperation of war.76
Guadalcanal Diary is an interesting film because it presents itself as providing a realistic slice of life
depiction of the marine life. The focus is not so much on the battle, but on the men fighting it.
Based on the memoir by Richard Tregaskis that it is adapted from, it uses a style that resembles a
documentary film rather than an action movie in order to showcase the lives of marines of various
creeds, races and ethnicities. The marines are presented as rather philosophical, wondering about
all sorts of questions related and unrelated to the war, and one of the officers was even a
philosophy professor. The film successfully uses this to pose questions related to propaganda
themes. The way the film treats the enemy is interesting. The subject of prisoners sends out a
somewhat mixed message. The first group of Japanese encountered is a bunch of weak looking
laborers who are captured and are thankful for the medical treatment they receive. A large
number of Japanese prisoners are shown who appear to be treated decently and one is seen
smoking. This gives out the message that they are still human and can be reasoned with and
captured. However, the film also features a fictionalized version of the Goettge Patrol, something
that was quite infamous among marines. The Goettge Patrol incident occurred when a Japanese
prisoner told the men of the patrol that there were other Japanese soldiers waiting to surrender.
However, what was really waiting for the unlucky patrol was an ambush that cost most of them
their lives. Something similar happens to a patrol in this film. The marines follow a Japanese
prisoner to a place where more Japanese are supposedly waiting to surrender. All but one of the
men in the patrol meet their end there, with only one surviving to spread the tale. Despite this,
76
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277 .
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79.
Shindler, Films, 57-77.
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
Bosley Crowther, ‘Guadalcanal Diary (1943) ‘Guadalcanal Diary,‘ a Stirring Action Drama of the Marine
Corps, With Wm. Bendix and Lloyd Nolan Opens at Roxy’, The New York Times, 18 November 1943.
Variety Staff, ‘Review: ‘Guadalcanal Diary’’, Variety, 31 December 1943.
Lewis Seiler, Guadalcanal Diary, United States (Twentieth Century-Fox) 1943.
52
the film still pictures Japanese prisoners being treated well after that scene (although soldiers joke
about handing them a knife so that they can commit hara-kiri). It is not clear from the film exactly
what the attitude of Americans should be towards taking prisoners. Perhaps the film intends to
say that the Americans should wait for the prisoners to come to them, rather than (rather
foolishly) walking into an ambush. The film features the usual racist language that is used for the
enemy which is not really worth further elaboration. What is worth mentioning however, is the
way in which tactics are portrayed in the film. The Japanese are always portrayed as either
deceitful or else as dying on mass. I would question the BMP’s judgment of their portrayal as
formidable. Barring the example of the ambush on the patrol, even when ambushing they are not
able to kill more than one or two Americans before being killed themselves, or even being literally
driven into the sea near the end. Interestingly enough though, the tactic of playing dead is used by
both the Americans and Japanese, although the American marine who uses it fares considerably
better and guns down three Japanese while exclaiming ‘that’s the one you taught me, Tojo’. He is
certainly portrayed as more competent than the Japanese officer who does not even manage to
shoot a man who wasn’t paying attention. I have to agree with the BMP reviewers on the
portrayal of the American marines. This is well done and showcases the theme of unity among
men from a variety of backgrounds who come together in the face of the enemy. However, the
portrayal of the enemy is less well done. They are indeed not portrayed as either wholly
incompetent, nor as supermen. It is also a nice touch to see prisoners being taken. However, they
still however lack any sign of individuality and are seemingly incapable of anything but deceit.
While this represents something of an improvement compared to Bataan from the previous year,
it is still far from a good portrayal.77
77
Dower, War, 33-73.
Seiler, Guadalcanal Diary.
53
A large group of Japanese prisoners. The film uses a panning camera to imply an even larger
number of prisoners. Note the man on the left smoking and a man to the right holding what also
appears to be a cigarette.78
78
Seiler, Guadalcanal Diary.
54
A Japanese soldier using ambush tactics. His victim was found dead the next morning.79
The next film to consider is Behind the Rising Sun (RKO, August 1943)80 directed by Edward
Dmytryk. It is almost unique because it does not present a uniformly negative picture of the
Japanese. Its main Japanese cast include Taro Seki, the Americanized Cornell-educated returnee
who goes back to Japan hoping to modernize it. His father, Ryo Seki, a wealthy and conservative
publicist and later the minister of propaganda and Tama, Taro’s love interest and the secretary of
their old American family friend Clancy O’Hara. Other members of the international community in
Japan are also starred in the film such as a Russian spy. None of the major Japanese characters are
played by Asians: instead the father-son duo is played by J. Carrol Naish and Tom Neal. The always
curious secretary is played by the Mexican actress Margo. Despite its attempt to make individuals
out of the Japanese the BMP was disappointed by what it saw of the initial script although they did
grant it their full assistance in appreciation of what it attempted. They found that the film did not
make it clear enough that the militarists and fascists were responsible for bringing Japan to its
then current state. RKO reacted with surprise, as they thought that the actions of Ryo Seki had
79
80
Seiler, Guadalcanal Diary.
Unfortunately, my method of viewing did not enable me to take pictures.
55
made this clear. However, the BMP wanted them to spell it out for the audience with an actual
speech. Another problem was the character of Taro Seki. While Taro starts out as a modernist, he
suddenly changes into a brutal soldier during the film without much explanation. He gets drafted
and becomes a soldier, sure, but within a short amount of time it is implied that the former
modernist is joining his fellow soldiers in committing baby murder and rape. The only indication
that this is not an instant turnabout is the fact that he protests the distribution of opium to the
Chinese.81
The film attempts to express the idea that the Japanese are people and are not innately
barbarians, but it largely fails to do this. This can be explained by various factors. The
transformation Taro has already been mentioned. Another factor is the turnabout that is seen in
his father, Ryo Seki, during the film. He changes his conservative ways after seeing what his son
became. However, instead of using his position of power as minister of propaganda to fight back,
he commits suicide. The only Japanese person who attempts to fight back in the film is Tama, who
is nothing more than a helpless secretary and village girl. She is not someone with the power to
change the country. The film gives multiple messages here. It implies that there is something
innate about the Japanese that makes them savage, even when educated in America as Taro was
and it also implies that changing Japan is useless. The film is to be commended for creating the
most sympathetic portrayal of a Japanese individual during the entire war (with the exception of
the Japanese friend in Little Tokyo U.S.A. who only serves as a victim). However, it ultimately fails
to convey the message that the Japanese, including the Japanese-Americans, are redeemable. The
minor Japanese characters in the film are also far from commendable, with Tama’s little sister
being sold into slavery. There is also the example of a bout between a Japanese judoka and an
American boxer in the film in which the judoka loses and is executed for bringing shame to his
country. In reality, there had in fact been a bout between a Japanese judoka (or possibly a boxer)
and an American boxer shortly before the war in which the Japanese man lost. However, that man
was not executed and this little addition serves no purpose but to present a more brutal picture of
the Japanese than is truthful in reality. Scenes like this were not needed because the film also
features Taro participating in something evoking the Nanking Massacre. Reality proved horrible
enough to make making up facts unnecessary. Reviewers noted that the film at least tried to treat
81
Edward Dmytryk, Behind the Rising Sun, United States (RKO Pictures) 1943.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277.
56
the Japanese as more than simian caricatures, but they were divided on its quality. The New York
Times called it commendable for at least attempting something.82
In order to compare the portrayal of the Japanese to that of the Germans in films, the adaption of
John Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down (Twentieth Century-Fox, March 1943) is a very interesting
film. While not all movies showed the divide between Good Germans and Bad Germans/Nazis,
most films at least attempted to humanize them. Some, such as Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (Twentieth
Century-Fox, January, 1944) went so far as to portray a German officer as the most sympathetic
character rather than the rest of the cast which came from the Allied nations. Interestingly
enough, that film was also based on a Steinbeck novel. However, it was not only Steinbeck
adaptations that included sympathetic Germans in their casts. Other films, such as Watch on the
Rhine (Warner Brothers, August 1943) and This Land Is Mine (RKO, May 1943) also featured
Germans, and while they were not always sympathetic, they were certainly portrayed as human
beings. Many were simply soldiers doing their job. For example in This Land is Mine they still
follow local legal procedure despite occupying the small French town in which the film takes place
and despite having the ability to do whatever they want. The Moon is Down was developed in
close cooperation with the BMP. They had successfully pushed for a change in the character of
one of the Germans, who had seemed too defeatist in their opinion. They also excised the line, ‘if
ten particular German heads were lopped off, they’d be destroyed’,83 which sounded as if the film
advocated making peace with the Germans in the case of a coup. After all, the OWI preferred
unconditional surrender. All in all, Ulric Bell was very pleased with the film and with how it
presented OWI themes. The critics agreed with him and called it a good movie with ‘socko’ casting
although its intellectual nature meant that it was somewhat lacking in emotion.84
82
Joseph R. Svinth, ‘Amateur Boxing in Pre-World War II Japan: The Military Connection’ (version 26 June
2013) http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_svinth2_0100.htm (14 May 2015).
Bryan Stanley, ‘Professor Kazaki Versus the Boxers’, Shoshin Ryu Yudanshakai Newsletter Vol.29; Issue 6
(2011).
Dmytryk, Behind.
T.S., ‘Behind the Rising Sun (1943) At the Palace’, The New York Times, 14 October 1943.
Variety Staff, ‘Review: ‘Behind the Rising Sun’’, Variety, 31 December 1943.
83
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 280.
84
Ibidem, 278-316.
Shindler, Films, 38-77.
Jacobs ‘World War 2’, 1-21.
Milberg, World War II, 56-79, 96-113.
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Rhodes, Propaganda, 139-176.
57
A German Officer, desperate for company.85
Since it is a film about the occupation of a small coastal town, the Germans are naturally not
shown acting in the same way as the Japanese are in the movies that portray active warfare.
Nevertheless, the difference in portrayal is extremely noticeable. They are all portrayed as
individuals, with one German soldier shown being kind to children, while another is portrayed as
cowardly. One Officer is desperate for company, and goes from a bar where everyone avoids him
to the house of a woman who ends up stabbing him. Colonel Lanser, the German leader, is shown
as an intellectual who is willing to kill to accomplish his goals, but still shows respect to his
enemies. A Sergeant rages at the civilians who disobey him, before swallowing his words in
embarrassment. They even sometimes allow public displays of disobedience. All things considered,
they are portrayed as humans. The German soldiers also do not shoot at women and wounded
men as seen in So Proudly We Hail!, and even go to the trouble of holding a mock trial for the first
man they execute, in the interest of keeping it within legal and civilized bounds. They are not good
Bosley Crowther, ‘The Moon Is Down (1943) THE SCREEN; ‘The Moon Is Down,’ the Film Version of
Steinbeck’s Novel and Play Starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Opens at Rivoli’ The New York Times, 27 March
1943.
Variety Staff, ‘Review: ‘The Moon Is Down’’, Variety, 31 December 1943.
Irving Pichel, The Moon is Down, United States (Twentieth Century-Fox) 1943.
85
Pichel, Moon.
58
guys, but they are nevertheless still individuals, which is a remarkable contrast to how almost all
the Japanese are portrayed. There is also not a single slur in the film, such as jerry or kraut.86
The penultimate film to be featured in this analysis is Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (MGM, November
1944). When the BMP first saw the script in 1943 they were pleased with all of the suggested
themes it handled and how realistic it was. They were also satisfied that Chinese were portrayed
as a good ally and the Japanese enemy was portrayed as formidable. Although the BMP did not
mention this, it is also remarkable that the only slur used in the film is ‘Jap’87 which considering
the time the film was made hardly qualifies as a slur in comparison to the other ones frequently
used. While the Japanese barely appear in it, it is very noticeable how humanely they are treated.
The film is about a bombing mission that targets Tokyo and the men actually raise questions about
bombing civilians. One of them says of the Japanese: ‘I don’t like them, but I don’t hate them’. He
also points out that his family had a Japanese gardener who was a nice guy. When their plane
crashes later in the film they even are open to the option of calling a Japanese doctor, although
this ends up not happening. The actual bombing is portrayed in a far more humane way than it
was in reality, with the bombers miraculously only hitting factories and other production facilities,
even though they do make a point of noting that the people working there are still civilians. The
only glimpse given of Japanese soldiers in the film also portrays them as acting professionally
while investigating a Chinese boat, rather than not wantonly killing as in other films. This film is
based on a true story and the film actually did feel realistic for once. The soldiers are shown as
rather human and the allied Chinese are shown as a good mixture of more modern people and less
modern people, representing a society in transition. Who was responsible for all this? It was not so
much the BMP in this case, although I’m sure that their manual was an influence, but it was
apparently the screenwriter who hated racism. The movie was very well received critically and by
the public. My personal opinion is that this is the best of all of the films I watched for this thesis,
both in terms of quality and in how it presents the OWI themes.88
86
Pichel, Moon.
Sandrich, Proudly.
87
Koppes appears to think that there were no slurs in the film, but earlier in his book he still mentions ‘Jap’
as a slur, so it seems that he got confused.
88
Mervyn LeRoy, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, United States (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) 1944.
Variety Staff, ‘Review: ‘Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo’’, Variety, 31 December 1944.
Bosley Crowther, ‘Guadalcanal Diary (1943) ‘Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, ‘a Faithful Mirror of Capt. Ted
Lawson’s Book, With Van Johnson, Tracy, at Capitol’, The New York Times, 16 November 1944.
59
Japanese soldiers seen searching, but not destroying, while on the lookout for American airmen.89
Back to Bataan (RKO, June 1945) is a film that was made by Dmytryk, who also made Behind the
Rising Sun. It is a film that was generally well liked and supported by the BMP during its production
due to its even-handed treatment of the Filipino people. There were some concerns at the script
review stage, which were mostly concerned with the way in which Japan’s empire-building was
portrayed. The Japanese were portrayed in the script as being interested in building an ‘Asia for
the Asiatics’. The BMP was worried that this focus on a racially united continent would seem
appealing to the viewers of the time, so they would rather have avoided that logic in the film.
Another issue was that an American schoolteacher asks her Filipino students what the Americans
did for them. The correct answer to that question in the film was that the Americans brought them
dignity and the knowledge that men must be free. The BMP did not want the schoolteacher to be
seen as too condescending, as that, coupled with the Japanese ideology would raise the question
89
Leroy, Thirty.
60
of imperialism and whether what the Japanese were doing was really all that different from what
the Americans were doing in the Philippines. The final review also expressed some disappointment
at the way the role of the Filipinos had diminished during filming in order to emphasize the
prowess of the American military who do the hard work with the Filipinos in a supporting role.
That the opening and closing frames showed actual veterans of the prison camps marching, but
left out any non-white veterans, was also a point of annoyance, as it made the audience forget
that there were Filipino soldiers in the actual prison camps.90
Being a John Wayne movie, it comes as no surprise that this film has much in common with the
westerns of the era. At times the Americans act as they are in one, wildly storming and shooting
while screaming like cowboys. Another tactic frequently employed by the Americans is the
ambush, which makes up almost every other battle in the movie. This is odd, considering the scorn
the Japanese get for using the very same tactics. Its treatment of the Filipinos seems fair. While
their relation to the Americans is paternalistic, they are certainly shown as doing their part in the
war. My source for the BMP review noted that there were no non-whites in the ex-prisoner
march, but this seems wrong. Several non-white people are noticeable, even if they do not have
name cards. They are also repeatedly mentioned and one of the main characters is a Filipino man
who had spend some time in a Japanese prison. The treatment of the Japanese is rather balanced
in comparison to many other films of the time. It is light on slurs, sticking to the word ‘Jap’. There
also are different personalities noticeable among the Japanese. You have the more brutal Colonel
Coroki and the somewhat friendlier, though still very strict, Major Hasko who plays the role of a
strict uncle in comparison to the parental roles that the Americans play. The focus on the Japanese
desire of a racially united Asia remains despite criticism, expressed by the Major. The strictness
and brutality of the Japanese in the film whenever something does not go their way makes it clear
that there will be no benefit for the Filipinos in this. In the end, it is the Japanese are portrayed as
rather incompetent and weak, as they do not manage to do not much more than kill unarmed
men and threaten children. Interestingly, the Filipino actor Alex Havier who played the Filipino
Yankee Salazar in Bataan returns here as a Filipino scout. The film was praised for its action
90
Jessica Lauren Wagner, “An Unpleasant Wartime Function”: Race, Film Censorship, and the Office of War
information, 1942-1945 (Thesis History, University of Maryland 2007) 101-104.
Randy Roberts, John Wayne: American (New York 1997) 261-262.
Edward Dmytryk, Back To Bataan, United States (RKO Radio Pictures) 1945.
61
scenes, but was criticized for its propagandistic themes, racism and unrealistic and juvenile
portrayal of what happened in Bataan.91
American prisoners marching after being freed. Note that althought focus is on the white man,
there are several non-white persons in the crowd.92
91
Dmytryk, Back To Bataan.
“Wagner, Unpleasant Wartime Function, 101-104.
Bosley Crowther, ‘Back to Bataan(1945) THE SCREEN; More Heroics’, The New York Times, 13 September
1945.
Variety Staff, ‘Review: ‘Back To Bataan’’, Variety, 31 December 1945.
Roberts, Wayne, 261-262.
92
Dmytryk, Back To Bataan.
62
The Japanese leadership discussing their plans for the Philippines. 93
If there is one thing to be learned from these films, it is that the BMP had very little direct
influence on the portrayal of the enemy. While they might have influenced it indirectly through
their manual. Their reviews which were meant to directly influence the portrayal of the enemy,
together with other issues, barely even made an attempt to improve this portrayal. It is possible
that the ‘preaching’ they said they did improved the portrayal, but this is impossible to verify.
However, on other issues the BMP clearly was willing to influence the movies and did in fact do so.
The other issues that the BMP had with the films were mostly improved, which demonstrates this.
The comparison with the Germans in The Moon Is Down also serves to illustrate that this is not an
issue about the organization having no problems with a ‘bad’ portrayal of the enemy as they
clearly influenced the portrayal in this film, creating a very balanced picture of the Germans.
However, despite grandstanding about their ideals of equality, the Japanese did not appear to
deserve this effort. This is not to say that their portrayal did not improve over time. While far from
ideal, a film like the recent Letters from Iwo Jima (Paramount, December 2006) being an example
of an ideal portrayal or Hell in the Pacific (Selmur Pictures, December 1968) as an older example of
93
Dmytryk, Back To Bataan.
63
a decent portrayal, the films certainly did improve. However, this improvement appears to have
been mostly caused by the men making the films, rather than the OWI’s influence. It was the men
from Hollywood who improved the movies, not the OWI men.
64
What were the results of the Office of War Information’s
influence?
This question can be interpreted in two different ways and will therefore be answered in two
parts. The first interpretation concerns the result of their influence on the content of the movies.
The second concern the result of their influence was on public opinion.
It is difficult to trace exactly what movie had what effect on public opinion. Even though one can
look at the number of tickets sold for a particular movie this does not guarantee that the movie
succeeded in spreading its message. However, one can look at the public opinions polls from the
Gallup Corporation in order to gain a general idea of changes in public opinion over the years. This
is still somewhat difficult as not all of the same questions were asked every year due to the
changing situation of the war. Nevertheless, general attitudes towards the Japanese can still be
seen in the answers in these polls. Whenever the percentiles in a poll do not reach 100%, the
remaining percentage of answers consists of ‘don’t know’ or other answers of the sort.
The August-December 1939 Gallup poll was released in March 1940 and contained several
questions related to the Japanese. The first question was: What nationality would make the worst
citizen? 2.5% answered Japanese, 4.1% answered Germans, 6.0% answered Jews and 22.5%
answered Italians. While they were among the four least popular nationalities, this is not
particularly out of the ordinary as most people who were visually and culturally different from the
American norm scored badly. Other questions were more drastic. When asked if they would be
inclined to aid England and France if Japan were to involve itself in the war, 60.4% said that they
would be, 29.8% said that they did not think so and only 2.3% would have been less inclined to do
so. When the same question was asked concerning Russia, the results were 56.6%, 33.3% and
2.8% respectively. The vast majority of respondents were against selling Japan any war materials,
with 82% voting against this. 24.1% wanted the U.S.A. to get out of the Philippines and leave them
to Japan, while 50.1% wanted to keep it. Given the war that was raging in Europe at the time,
there were also many questions on Germany. I feel that the most revealing one concerning
attitude was the question about which statement came closest to people’s idea of Germany. Here
66.6% answered: ‘The German People are essentially peace loving and kindly, but they have been
65
unfortunate in being misled, too often, by ruthless and ambitious leaders.’94 Two other answers,
whose combined results were 6.8%, also indicate a neutral or mildly positive attitude towards the
German people, while 19.6% thought of them as brutes. This indicates that even though Germany
was actively waging war, many did not think of its people are evil.95
The 1941 releases of the polls did not feature the Japanese strongly. There were only a few
relevant questions throughout the four issues of the year. The Winter issue had a question
pertaining to Japanese expansion and asked whether the United States should put a halt to it.
Here 51% answered yes and 31% answered no. The Spring issue showed an overwhelming 56% in
favor of stopping Japan from seizing the Dutch East Indies, with 24% voting against this. However,
isolationism was still powerful, with only 39% willing to take this as far as war and 46% voting
against war. The Summer issue shows that 49.4% of people thought that it was time to take strong
measures against Japan. 55.7% thought that those measures should include military measures,
24.2% didn’t want strong measures and 32.5% didn’t want them to be military. The Autumn issue
contained no mention of Japan.96
The Spring 1942 issue covered the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. In this issue, 52% believed
(correctly) that the U.S. would go to war with Japan sometime in the future, while 27% did not
think so. 85% thought that the U.S. would go to war with Germany sooner or later. The most
interesting results were when people had to answer which statement they associated with Japan.
46.5% were for a hands-off approach (until attacked), while 37.2% were in favor of directly
interfering in Japan’s actions in the Pacific. However, Japan was not really seen as that strong a
threat, with 64% thinking that Germany posed the bigger threat, 15% thinking that Japan posed
the bigger threat and 15% seeing them as equal threats. The results until this point reveal that
prior to the war breaking out; the Japanese people were not hated per se, although the American
94
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly
Vol. 4, Issue 1 (1940) 99.
95
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly
Vol. 4, Issue 1 (1940) 83-115.
96
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly
Vol. 5, Issue 1 (1941) 133-165.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 2 (1941) 313-334.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 3 (1941) 470-497.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 4 (1941) 666-687.
66
people were certainly not fans of their government’s actions. The Germans received more
negative attention, but again, it was generally not the people who were hated.97
After the war broke out the Japanese featured more prominently in the 1942 polls. When asked
about the reason for Japan’s attack, a majority of people (68.5%) seemed to think that Japan was
just doing their duty Germany’s ally, while 23.7% of them gave a response that was some sort of
variation on the Japanese having an innate need or want to fight the Americans. The Germans
appear to be seen as the main enemy, with 50% thinking that they pose the greatest threat, 25%
believing the Japanese pose the greatest threat and the rest seeing them as equals.98
In 1943 Americans were asked why they thought that the war was being waged. Here 90.7% of
people gave some variety of an answer that the OWI would have been quite pleased with, such as
ideals, wanting to get rid of fascism and so on. Likewise the OWI would have been happy that only
19.1% thought it was for more cynical reasons such as power, or solely for self-defense. The poll
total percentage was 135.7% since people could give multiple answers. When asked which country
they think that they could get along with better after the war, 67% answered Germany and only
8% answered Japan. However Japan was thought of as a more formidable foe than the Germans
and one who would hold out longer. Japan was also seen as a bigger threat, with 57% thinking it
posed the greatest threat, compared to 25% who thought that Germany posed the greatest
threat. 62% believed that going to war to acquire power was something innate to the Japanese
while only 22% thought the same off the Germans. Meanwhile 46% thought that the Germans
were too easily led, while only 27% thought the same of the Japanese. When asked if they could
97
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly
Vol. 4, Issue 1 (1940) 83-115.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 1 (1941) 133-165.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 2 (1941) 313-334.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 3 (1941) 470-497.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
5, Issue 4 (1941) 666-687.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
6, Issue 1 (1942) 140-174.
98
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly
Vol. 6, Issue 2 (1942) 302-318.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
6, Issue 3 (1942) 475-494.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol.
6, Issue 4 (1942) 650-665.
67
make good citizens of the world, 32% thought that the Germans could but only 11% thought that
the Japanese could make good citizens. Thus in 1943 we can see three things happening. The
perception of the war changed and the Japanese came to be seen as more formidable, although
not invincible, just as the OWI wanted. A majority of people also believed in the more idealistic
motivations for the war. However, the OWI had clearly failed to make people see the Japanese as
equals rather than as a war-hungry people, while the Germans were seen as equals. The OWI’s
goal of propaganda fostering an understanding of the enemy had thus far not succeeded.99
In 1944 the trend continued of people thinking that the war with Japan would last longer than
with Germany. There was a slight decrease in the percentage of people who thought that going to
war to make themselves more powerful was something innate to the Japanese, with 57% believing
this. 30% thought that they were too easily led, while 13% thought that they could make good
citizens. In the case of Germany 25% thought this was innate, 47% thought they were too easily
led and 28% thought they could make good citizens. A great variety of questions were asked to
find out how much Americans knew about Japan and these indicate a great divide, with almost no
issue having a great majority one way or another. The only thing that Americans were largely
united on was that their industry was worse than that of America. 55% of the respondents thought
that the enemy in the war with Japan was its government, rather than the people, while 11%
thought it was the people and 31% were convinced that it was both. In the case of Germany 63%
thought that it was the government, 8% the people and 27% both. When asked about the fate of
Japan after the war, 13% thought all Japanese should be killed, 33% thought the country should be
destroyed as a political entity, while the rest preferred kinder answers such as educating or
supervising them. The ‘kill them all’ option was not available for the German equivalent. However,
34% thought that the German nation should be ended, while 32% thought that it should be made
powerless. The rest wanted to see the Nazi party obliterated and its people reeducated or else had
no opinion. When considering the OWI ideals, one can see some positive developments here and
also some negative ones. Less people thought that the Japanese were innately warlike and many
did not think that it was the people themselves who were the enemy. However, there was a
99
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Gallup and Fortune Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly
Vol. 7, Issue 1 (1943) 161-178.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 7,
Issue 2 (1943) 307-339.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 7,
Issue 3 (1943) 478-505.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 7,
Issue 4 (1943) 736-764.
68
severe lack of knowledge about the country and, despite only 11% thinking that the Japanese
people were the enemy; a shocking 13% wanted all the Japanese dead! A clear difference in the
perception of the two enemies can be seen in the fact that this option was not even available for
the Germans. 100
The question of how the American people felt about the Japanese people returns once again in
1945. This time, 62% were convinced that they will always want to go to war to make themselves
as powerful as possible, 27% saw them as being too easily led and 11% thought that they could be
good citizens. The answers concerning the Germans were 37%, 37% and 26% respectively. On the
treatment of the Japanese and Germans, 49% were convinced that the Japanese needed strict
supervision, while 42% thought the Germans needed it. 40% were in favor of leniency for the
Japanese people, while 65% were in favor of it for the German people. 20% thought that the
Japanese deserved definitive punitive action, while 8% thought this about the Germans. Most
people once again thought that the war would last longer with the Japanese than with the
Germans. When asked what the Germans and Japanese thought about the killing and treatment of
prisoners in Germany or Japan, 63% thought that the Japanese people entirely approved, while
31% thought that the Germans entirely approved. 25% thought that the Japanese partly approved,
while 51% thought the same for the Germans. 85% were in favor of using the atomic bomb on
Japan. After it had been used 53.5% still thought so this 22.7% wanted it to be used more before
Japan had the chance to surrender. When asked whether the Japanese and German people were
naturally cruel and brutal, 55.9% thought that the majority of the Japanese were, while 38.9%
thought the same of the Germans. 34.1% thought that a minority of Japanese were naturally so,
while 53.7% thought the same with the Germans. When asked about the treatment of the
Germans and the Japanese during the occupation, people were more inclined to be tougher
against the Japanese than the Germans.101
100
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 8,
Issue 1 (1944) 124-161.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 8,
Issue 2 (1944) 276-303.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 8,
Issue 3 (1944) 435-457.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘Public Opinion Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 8,
Issue 4 (1944) 567-603.
101
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘The Quarter’s Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 9,
Issue 1 (1945) 83-109.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘The Quarter’s Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 9,
Issue 2 (1945) 223-257.
69
The 1945 results and the change seen in the answers over time indicate several things. However,
one has to note that two factors complicate the reading of the results. The first is the fact that the
war with Japan lasted longer, making it fresher in the mind of the people. The second factor is that
the wording of the questions was often not the same, which could lead to differences in the
answers. Nevertheless, the results do indicate that overall the Japanese were regarded as worse
than the Germans during the course of the war. The OWI had made little progress in informing the
people about the Japanese. However, all of the Gallup polls do overwhelmingly show that since
the outbreak of the war the American people wanted to help and were willing to make sacrifices.
It can also be safely said that the vast majority of Americans, though not all of them, felt well
informed by the OWI. While it is difficult to say how great a role movies played in comparison to
other propaganda, it is known that the movies were really popular. However, and this brings us to
the second point of this chapter, the BMP had virtually no success in influencing the content of the
movies regarding the treatment of the Japanese. Frankly, I think that this failure can be attributed
more to the OWI and the BMP than to the movie studios themselves. Many movie makers had
shown themselves quite willing to go along with portraying the OWI ideals, with Warner Brothers
as an example. Films that had zero influence regarding the Japanese such as Thirty Seconds Over
Tokyo also followed the party line. The BMP had also shown that it had considerable power to
influence and change movies, certainly after Ulric Bell took over. However, they did not change
the portrayal of the Japanese and after a while any mention of their treatment in movies
disappeared from the BMP reviews. While this has been explained by the reviewers realizing the
futility of encouraging change, this makes no real sense given the fact that Ulric Bell and the BMP
had such power after his takeover. If anything, they had acquired more power to encourage
change as time passed. Moreover, change could actually be observed in the movies as a more
balanced portrayal slowly emerged. However, what I think is more likely is that they were willing
to sacrifice the Japanese in order not to risk the relationship they had built up with Hollywood.
Another likely reason is the fact that so many of their more idealistic members had left. With a
more goal oriented OWI there were less people pushing for change.102
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘The Quarter’s Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 9,
Issue 3 (1945) 365-393.
American Association for Public Opinion Research, ‘The Quarter’s Polls’ Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 9,
Issue 4 (1945) 510-538.
102
O’Neill, Democracy, 247-266.
Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes, 248-277.
Jerome S. Bruner, ‘OWI and the American Public’, Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1943) 125133.
70
Conclusion
This thesis has followed the developments of American World War II propaganda from its roots to
its end. Several developments can be seen in this process. While the propagandists started out
proclaiming themselves as idealists, this changed over time. Developments in the government led
to a severely weakened OWI and this cost many idealists their job. Yet even before this, their
idealism had had little practical effect when it came to the portrayal of the Japanese. The reviews
barely mention any of the many faults in the portrayal of the enemy. The only things that they
apparently cared about were that the Japanese should be portrayed as formidable and that their
ideology should not be seen as attractive. This was not really congruous with the OWI’s ideals.
Despite this, the portrayal of the Japanese enemy did improve somewhat during the war. While it
never reached anything close to a neutral portrayal, it certainly improved. It is important to
remember that the issue here is not the fact that the Japanese were never portrayed as the good
guys in the American movies. That is not an issue and is in fact logical. Rather, the issue is that
nearly every film portrayed the Japanese in black and white terms. While the German portrayal
had shades of gray, with an acknowledgment that there was a difference between good and bad
Germans, the Japanese had no such luck. Barring the single poor exception of Behind the Rising
Sun they were uniformly portrayed as supporters of the war. There was some slight development
however. With time, the Japanese were portrayed with something approaching individualism. One
film even attempted to point out that they were not all evil, and that there was a segment of the
Japanese population that did not support the war. Whether this was due to the fact that its
creators had a few idealists among their ranks, or whether it was due to the influence of the
manual, is difficult to say. However, it is clear that it was not due to the influence of the reviews.
The OWI ideals could not be detected in the way they handled the portrayal of the enemy in
movies, which is strange when one considers the importance Little Tokyo U.S.A. had for the
development of the BMP. It was the racism in that film and the failure to correct it that had led to
the need to review scripts. Yet the script reviews do not reveal much desire for correcting antiJapanese racism in later films. Their propaganda was effective. Many people went to the movies
and the American people were willing to support the war, although they didn’t need convincing
after it broke out. A majority of the American people also felt that they were well informed about
the war. However, in this case the OWI did not manage to stay true to its ideals.
71
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77