Origin: This is a portion of an interview of Richardson Okie Shoemaker on February 10th, 2013 by Teddy Kortenhof. Mr. Shoemaker lived through the War, and was thus affected by the propaganda present at the time.
Purpose: This is an interview conducted long after the war ended. Its purpose is to gather historical information about an event from witnesses.
In this interview Mr. Shoemaker talked about propaganda and its effects in the United States during World War II. Mr. Shoemaker was 8 years old when the United States entered the war. He remembers lots of racist propaganda that was distributed in the United States. He remembers that the propaganda showed Japanese people as people who “had buck teeth and... wore thick Coke bottle glasses” (5). The propaganda made him “hate” (5) the Japanese. This shows that the propaganda in the U.S. served to install false images of Japanese people in the minds of U.S. civilians, and to make the people of the U.S. hate Japanese people. By creating a hatred of the Japanese in the mindset of Americans the U.S. Government made many American’s sympathetic to the cause of the War. This made the country more willing to support the war. This source is significant because it shows the effects of Propaganda on children who lived through WWII. This source allows researchers to get an idea of how propaganda affected the average U.S. civilian.
Interview Transcript
Question: How old were you at the beginning of World War II?
Answer: My eighth birthday was two weeks before the war started, so at the start of the war I was eight years old.
Question: Did you notice any propaganda during the war?
Answer: Back then the propaganda was everywhere. There were fliers about scrap metal drives, and lots of posters about joining the military.
Question: Was any of the propaganda you saw racist?
Answer: Oh my god yes. The propaganda in this country was everywhere. There were lots of posters and things about Japanese people. All the posters were very racist. They never referred to the Japanese as “Japanese”. They were all Japs. The posters always called them Japs, and so did we. We all knew, because of the propaganda, that they all had buck teeth and they all wore thick Coke bottle glasses. And they were all mean.
