On December 22, 1941, two weeks after Pearl Harbor, LIFE Magazine, one of the most respectable, indeed iconic, publications in American history, offered its readers an article entitled "How to Tell Japs From the Chinese." In it the editors expressed their concern:
In the first discharge off emotions touched off by the Japanese on their nation, U.S. citizens have been demonstrating a distressing ignorance on the delicate question of how to tell a Chinese from a Jap. Innocent victims in cities all over the country are many of the 75,000 U.S. Chinese, whose homeland is our staunch ally. To dispel this confusion LIFE here adduces a rule-of-thumb from the anthropometric conformations that distinguish friendly Chinese from enemy alien Japs.
The problem, to the editors, was not vigilantism, but mistaken identity. LIFE wanted to educate its millions of readers to eyeball and identify Japanese-Americans with a higher success rate than had hitherto been exhibited. Abuse and assault were fine, but should target persons of Japanese ancestry only, those automatically assumed to be fifth columnists in league with Japan.
LIFE presented side by side photos of "typical" Japanese and Chinese and noted differences in noses, complexion, and facial hair, among other tell-tale signs. It also observed
An often sounder clue is facial expression, shaped by cultural, not anthropological, factors. Chinese wear the rational calm of tolerant realists. Japs show the humorless intensity of ruthless mystics.
Today, as Islamophobia has amplified in the wake of 9/11, ISIS, San Bernardino and Orlando, Donald Trump, the presumed presidential nominee of the Republican party, and other mainstream Republican officeholders, are well on their way to embracing the mentality of LIFE's editors. One can only imagine the anxieties of the nation's 3.3 million Muslim citizens and residents, as well as others with brown skin, e.g., Hindus, Sikhs, whose appearance, just like the Chinese-Americans post-Pearl Harbor, might "confuse" today's vigilantes.
There has unquestionably been an increase in reported assaults and acts of vandalism against Muslims and mosques in the country after every dramatic terrorist act associated with Muslims, whether in Paris, Brussels, or San Bernardino. Orlando will be no exception. But, vigilantism must be viewed within the larger context of American public opinion towards Muslim-Americans as well. The most recent assessment of attitudes towards Muslims living in the US, polling in November 2015, after the rise of ISIS, but before Paris, Brussels, and especially San Bernardino and Orlando, indicated a distinction between views of Islam and Muslims. Attitudes towards Islam were more unfavorable than towards Muslims as people. Nevertheless, 46 percent viewed Muslims unfavorably. It would be surprising if those negative views were not more prominent in the wake of the terrorist attacks than before.
If one wants to use immediate post-Pearl Harbor attitudes towards Japanese-Americans as a benchmark, the evidence suggests that outside of California, where almost 90 percent of mainland Japanese-Americans lived, most Americans considered German-Americans more dangerous. Nevertheless, by March 1942, three months after the attack, 59 percent of the American people supported evacuating Japanese-Americans. Of course, without the support of President Roosevelt and then California Governor Earl Warren and other politicians and military officials, this shift in opinion might not have been so rapid and internment might not have happened. Or if the economic interests of white California farmers had not conflicted with Japanese-American ones. In Hawaii, the site of the attack itself, 150,000 Japanese-Americans were spared internment because the white economic elites who dominated desperately needed Japanese employees, who represented a third of the entire population.
Muslim-Americans are proportionately ten times more numerous and geographically far more dispersed than Japanese-Americans were and do not have a niche in our economy that creates envy or enmity among any powerful constituency. Moreover, 47 percent of Americans personally know, whether superficially or well, Muslims, Arabs, or both. Those who have some personal interaction are far more favorably disposed to them than those who have none. By contrast, in 1942, very few non-Japanese-Americans had any interaction with those outside their demographic. Japanese-American social isolation undoubtedly contributed to stereotypes and paranoia regarding fifth column propensities. Their small numbers and geographical concentration also presented minimal logistical obstacles to internment.
One other factor militates against a parallel between the coming period and 1942: the sheer size of the world's Muslim population. Internment, or even a somewhat more plausible policy of mass deportation of Muslim residents who were non-citizens, or even citizens, would invariably lead to America's global economic and political isolation. By contrast, Japanese-Americans' internment brought no international ostracism.
We are a long way, one hopes, from internment, deportations, or any limitations on citizenship or legal residency rights for Muslim-Americans, though profiling, discrimination, vandalism and assault are bad enough. But, although there are clear differences between today's circumstances and those existing in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, it would be foolish to think it can't happen again. Germany probably had the lowest levels of anti-Semitism in Europe prior to Hitler's ascendance in 1933. Moreover, history is replete with governments and citizens acting in ways that, in retrospect, were incomprehensible and inhumane.
Ironically, the military setbacks that ISIS has suffered in Iraq and Syria has made it far more difficult for sympathizers to join the fight against the "infidels" by travelling to those countries. ISIS now encourages aspiring "fighters" to stay in the West and be fifth columnists. The resulting carnage is a consequence of ISIS' weaknesses, not its strength, but demagogues and bigots can argue the opposite and promote the view that ISIS is winning. Fortunately, the Obama Administration understands this paradox, though it has thus far failed to explicitly describe it. The failure to do so jeopardizes Muslim-Americans and emboldens Trump and his bedfellows. The mainstream media must also bear responsibility for describing, in horrific detail, terrorist attacks and their aftermath, while not making a significant effort to put them in a larger military and political context.