American Peril: Faces of the Enemy

American Peril: Faces of the Enemy is a portrait series depicting members of the Japanese American and Muslim American communities directly impacted by negative Japanese and Islamophobic propaganda. It reminds us all to be vigilant of the racial bias in our society’s media. No group should be vilified for the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes, or the religion they practice.

These photos were exhibited at Philadelphia City Hall in 2020 for the exhibit American Perl: Faces of the Enemy and was funded in part by the JACL Legacy Fund and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Project Stream. In 2023, a selection of photos from this exhibit were displayed as part of the Nikkeijin Illinois exhibit at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Spurlock Museum of World Cultures

Click on a thumbnail to read a description of selected propaganda accompanied with captions in the individuals’ own words.

Large-scale Asian immigration to the United States began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Contrary to the utopian ideals associated with European immigrants, Asians were commonly viewed with suspicion and fear. With each new Asian immigrant group followed intense xenophobic propaganda in the news media and popular culture that resulted in racially restrictive immigration policies and violent acts of racism. This racialization laid a foundation for World War II anti-Japanese propaganda, which in turn influenced current day Islamophobia.

During WWII,  anti-Japanese propaganda flooded popular culture and Japanese Americans became the target of extreme racial prejudice, culminating in the forced eviction and mass incarceration of over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry. Long after the war ended, images of enemy Japan continued to live in the public imagination through propaganda cartoons, work posters, WWII films, and elsewhere, contributing to racial hatred for decades to come.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the two decades that have passed, Islamophobic propaganda has replaced the anti-Japanese imagery that once permeated media and entertainment. Between the threat of expanding a travel ban already imposed on thirteen Muslim-majority countries and increasing tensions with Iran—Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities are frequent targets of racial propaganda. For Muslim-identified communities in the U.S., this has resulted in disproportionate policing, surveillance, and incarceration.

Although the target has changed, the tactics to scapegoat an already vulnerable minority group remain the same. Like all propaganda, it seeks to dehumanize.