On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. In response, the U.S. declared war against Japan, thus entering WWII. The U.S. forcibly relocated over 120,000 Japanese Americans into mass incarceration camps, marking the only time in history that innocent U.S. residents and citizens were forcefully incarcerated by the U.S. on the basis of race. The U.S. feared that Japanese Americans were loyal to Japan, making them dangerous to the U.S. However, as the U.S. needed more men for the war, the U.S. turned to Japanese Americans, despite having earlier labeled them as enemies. They even recruited men from the camps. In the 2019 graphic novel, 442, Koji Steven Sakai and Phinneas Kiyomura explore how the racialization of the Japanese enemy led to Japanese Americans being dehumanized and having their lives devalued.
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Koji Steven Sakai 