The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 finally brought the isolationist stance of the United States to an end. While the U.S. had been reticent to bring the fight to the Axis, following the attack on American soil the U.S. had no choice but to become involved in the war. In the wake of the Japanese surprise attack, some Americans harbored suspicions of people of Japanese ancestry living in the United States. This anxiety, predicated on race, extended even to American citizens whose families had originated from Japan.
This cartoon, published on February 13, 1942, reflects Geisel’s embrace of the widespread fear of Japanese Americans. It shows throngs of presumably Japanese people lining up to receive explosives at a stand marked “Honorable 5th Column.” A lookout perched on the roof of the house gazes westward through a spyglass, awaiting the arrival of a Japanese invasion fleet. The imminence of such an invasion is further indicated by the two ships in the background steaming for the American West Coast. The cartoon is suggesting that Japanese Americans will sabotage American efforts to repel an invasion of the American west coast.
While on the surface Geisel’s cartoon seems to address security concerns, however misguided they may have been, it also reveals latent American racial attitudes. His depiction of the Japanese Americans lined up from Washington to Oregon entirely lacks any differentiation between character’s features, a departure from his previous work in which he excels at crafting interesting and unique characters. By drawing all of the Japanese American characters in this cartoon identically Geisel is advancing a message that they are uniformly dangerous and no different from the people who had attacked Pearl Harbor.
The sentiment that Geisel was tapping into in drawing this cartoon had wide support in the U.S. government. Just six days after the cartoon was published President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for the establishment of internment camps from Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Over 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom had been born in the United States and were thus citizens, would be confined to these camps for the duration of the war.