America Has a Long History of Anti-Asian Action

In the days after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center building, comparisons to Pearl Harbor were frequently made. Both attacks resulted in a spirit of American unity. A common enemy was identified. A national government galvanized American energies to combat and destroy the forces that attacked the homeland. How true are comparisons of these events? In many ways, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 represented vastly different events that affected Americans in dissimilar ways.

 

Pearl Harbor and the American Aftermath

 

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii roused American hatred and galvanized the nation. Discrimination against Asian peoples had long been part of American cultural and social history. In the latter 19^th Century, political party platforms called for the limitation and cessation of Asian immigration, often labeled “Mongolian” immigration. San Francisco’s Angel Island was a stark reminder of American antipathy toward Asians seeking to migrate to the United States.

 

In early 1942, by Presidential executive order, Japanese-Americans living primarily on the west coast were taken to internment camps as a security measure following the massive Pearl Harbor raid that temporarily incapacitated the Pacific fleet. As John Toland comments, a national sense of outrage consumed Americans. According to Toland, news of the attack united Americans: “Strangers on the streets looked at one another with a new awareness.”

 

Toland relates that “on the banks of the Potomac someone cut down one of the cherry trees donated years before by Japan.” A New York Times letter to the editor (December 8, 1941) states that, “the unhoped-for has happened, and we shall unitedly arise to crush the offender; we project no happy ideal save the continuance and preservation for posterity of the American way of life.”

 

Secretary of War Stimson,  having been told by President Roosevelt of the December 7^th attack by telephone, noted that “a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.” As late as August 1945, after President Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans recalled Pearl Harbor and viewed the new weapon as just retribution for the attack that began the war.

 

September 11, 2001, the New Pearl Harbor

 

The aftermath of 9/11 saw a concerted effort on the part of the Bush Administration to forestall any anti-Muslim violence in the United States. Unlike 1941, no popular songs targeted Islamic or Muslim nations. National Public Radio’s “Performance Tonight” featured somber, mournful concerts from around the world. It was time of global solidarity. Americans bought stickers displaying the stars and stripes and pasted them on their cars. Members of Congress stood on the steps of the Capitol singing “God Bless America.”

 

But the enemy in 2001 was elusive, identified with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Unlike the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the fast-paced nature of American society soon forgot the initial shock. A prolonged war in the Middle East, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, imposed no sacrifices on American society. Muslims in America were not put into camps or targeted, and great efforts were made to avoid “racial profiling.” In many ways, this was a step in the right direction.

 

Neither Pearl Harbor nor 9/11 evokes much passion among young Americans as the nation approaches the second decade of the new century. The pace of technology has relegated these events to the confines of “history.” Pearl Harbor was a rallying cry, much like “Remember the Maine” in 1898. But as the “greatest generation” passes on, the “day of infamy” becomes a foggy remembrance of a past that seems disconnected to the present.

 

Sources:

 

John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945, Vol. I (New York: Random House, 1970).

New York Times, “Letters to the Times,” December 8, 1941.

(First published in Suite101 by Michael Streich in 2009. Copyright owned by Michael Streich and reprints require written permission)

On April 22, 2021 The U.S. Senate passed anti-Asian legislation. Only one senator voted against it: Josh Hawley (R-MO) who stated the bill was too broad.