[This is an introduction to two Office of War Information propaganda films on Japanese Internment. To view the films, click on the URLs at the end of this article.]

Upon viewing once again the Office of War Information's “newsreels” on the forced removal and confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II, I am struck by the contradictions of the ideals of U.S. democracy and its realities. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his message to Congress about a year before the U.S. plunged into the war, articulated some of those ideals. In his speech, Roosevelt told the nation and world that the U.S. was a beacon of democracy amidst the darkness of Europe and East Asia engulfed by despotisms. “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms,” the President declared. “The freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—anywhere in the world.” That global insistence on American democracy's imperative, “everywhere in the world,” bespeaks an imperial and “noble” mission that became the ostensible purpose for U.S. involvement in World War II.