By Audrey Fong
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.
442 opens with a brief history of Japanese Americans and their treatment during WWII, the “remote prison camps” they endured, and how the 442nd regiment, an entirely Japanese American regiment, became “the most highly decorated fighting force of its size and duration in United States army history.” This introductory panel contrasts the difference between the unfair treatment of Japanese Americans with the honors a group of Japanese Americans would achieve. This contrast reminds readers that Japanese Americans were WWII heroes, undermining the undeserved suspicion and hatred they received during WWII. Then, the first chapter introduces Hiro, the protagonist, who explains why he is going to war: “If I say yes and I fight for this country, it proves I’m American. It proves we’re all American.” This obsession of Hiro’s to prove that he and other Japanese Americans are true Americans is a recurring theme in Japanese American WWII literature such as Traci Chee’s We Are Not Free, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar, and George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy. This need to prove themselves as Americans shows how the racialization of the enemy and focus on their Japanese-ness, or otherness, led to the U.S. viewing Japanese Americans as less American.
The graphic novel is filled with derogatory terms for the enemy. Characters refer to the Japanese as “Japs” and the Germans as “Krauts” – both terms fraught with anger. Chapter one ends with white U.S. soldiers calling the 442nd regiment “fuckin’ Japs.” This illustrates how even though both troops are fighting for the U.S., the white troop still groups the Japanese American troop with the enemy. Twice in the graphic novel, Hiro expresses guilt or indecision over killing a German soldier, shown by the way the panels in each scene zoom into the dead man’s face, emphasizing his humanity. When Hiro looks down at the dead soldier, another soldier comforts him, saying, “You did what you had to do. So did he. It’s honorable.” While this character brushes off the German’s soldier’s death as “what you had to do,” Hiro continues to be troubled by it. As someone who has been racialized, Hiro understands what it is like to be dehumanized. He sees the soldier he killed for what the soldier is, a human being, and feels guilt for slaughtering him. In these scenes, Sakai and Kiyomura show how racializing the enemy as “Japs” and “Krauts” dehumanizes them and makes it easier to kill the enemy with no guilt and how little enemy lives are valued.
Since the 442nd regiment is seen as “fuckin’ Japs” by fellow U.S. soldiers, they are seen as inhumane as the Japanese enemy is seen, Sakai and Kiyomura argue. Because of this, the 442nd regiment was treated as less important than white soldiers and were assigned to more dangerous, and arguably less critical, battles. Characters in the book understand this: in chapter two, a character named Four Eyes tells Hiro, “We’ll be dead anyways. We’re just cannon fodder.” To Four Eyes, the U.S. government only values the 442nd regiment as bodies to take bullets. When the regiment is told they are going on another mission (the Rescue of the Lost Battalion) to save the white regiment who had called them “fuckin’ Japs,” a soldier asks another where they’re going to which that soldier replies, “Take another useless town that we lose as soon as we leave,” showing how pointless they felt their work is. These quotes show how the 442nd regiment understood their lives were less valued. Through these scenes, Sakai and Kiyomura explain how because the Japanese Americans were othered, they were seen as less human during WWII, leading to higher than average casualty rates for Japanese American soldiers.
442 ends on a stark note by sharing statistics from the Rescue of the Lost Battalion, the battle described in the story. The last paragraph reads, “211 of the original 272 141st Texas Regiment survived. In the process of rescuing the lost battalion, over two hundred of the 442 were killed or missing in action and 2,000 were injured.” Through simple math, one can see how the casualty rate of Japanese American soldiers was about ten times higher than the number of men saved. This is one example of how thousands of Japanese Americans soldiers were sent on a suicide mission to save a small white regiment surrounded by German troops. Not only were they sent to save a regiment that had previously called them racial slurs, but many of the Japanese Americans in this battle were either injured horribly or died brutally as shown by a scene in chapter six in which a soldier’s chest is blown open. This huge loss of Japanese American life shows how the racialization of the Japanese led to the dehumanization of Japanese Americans, rendering their lives less valuable to the U.S. government. Once dehumanized, they were seen merely as bodies to be used for dangerous tasks, sacrificed to protect and save white bodies. While one should save others on the same side during a war, one can’t help but notice the discrepancy between Japanese American lives sacrificed and white lives saved in this battle. While 442 focuses on a single man’s journey, it reflects a bigger problem during WWII – how racism on the U.S. homefront caused the unfair treatment of over 120,000 U.S. residents and how this racialization rendered their lives as less important. By deeming them as less important, it made it easier for the U.S. government to incarcerate them in shoddily-constructed camps and to sacrifice their lives in riskier and less critical battles.
While it is honorable that the 442nd regiment is the most decorated force of its size in U.S. history, it is important to remember that this is because they were sent on the most dangerous tasks and suffered extremely high casualty rates. Sakai and Kiyomura use their graphic novel as a warning that in future wars, the U.S. should refrain from racializing the enemy, rendering them as others, because it has repercussions on the home front and can result in the unnecessary death and mutilation of a group of people.
442 is available from the Japanese American National Museum.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog that she is hoping to get into modeling. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.