Racism Expressed Throughout the History of Film: The Fighting Seabees (1944)

    17 years after the opening of The Jazz Singer, the world was in a very different place. In 1939 when German troops invaded Poland, World War II in Europe had begun. In December of 1941 the United States entered the war, fighting Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. This war changed the way Americans contributed at home. Many men and women worked to make weapons of warplanes, battleships, and guns in order to outproduce the Axis powers (World War II: An Overview).
    The Fighting Seabees was a popular World War II propaganda movie released in 1944. It tells a story that follows the formation of the U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalion (Arnold). The film stars action heroes John Wayne and Dennis O’Keefe. Wayne plays a character who is head of the construction company building airstrips in the Pacific for the U.S. Navy. Fighting for the Navy to allow his men to be armed, he agrees for his men to endure the necessary military training for this to happen.
    The majority of the plot takes place on an Island in the Pacific. Wayne and his team are fearful for there lives when they have no protection, afraid of the Japanese forces. Historically they were right in being afraid. Japan was part of the opposing Axis powers, and their mission was to beat us. However, what the film inaccurately portrays is the way in which they depicted the Japanese fighters.
    In fighting scenes throughout the film the Japanese are seen as ruthless killers. In junction with the visuals of the Japanese with overly dramatic facial expressions, and senseless killing, the audio also contributes to the way the Japanese were perceived. In one particular scene where the Japanese are intruding on the American construction base in army tanks, we not only see them smiling as they are shooting Americans down, but we can also hear them laughing in a high pitch giggle. This depiction of the Japanese is very dramatic, exaggerated, and highly racist.
    On the opposite side of the spectrum is the Americans. Because this was an American war propaganda film, it only makes sense for the U.S. fighters to be the heroic “good guys”. We fall for the characters, and become involved in their lives when romantic relationships form.
    In the scene described above with the evil, smiling and laughing Japanese trudging toward the American site in a tank of some sort, an American worker appears out of nowhere in a crane-like machine. He approached the tank at an angle and manages to push it off a cliff. The following shot we see him in his crane, atop the cliff. The hero above.
    Because Americans were pro-U.S. Army during the release of the film, it never appeared to be racist to the audience. The audience was on the U.S. side and they not only believed that the opposing forces were bad people, but the film further documented this.

Japanese depicted as ruthless killers.

In this fight scene the Japanese brutally kill the Americans. They stab them with bayonets and bludgeon the faces of Americans with the ends of their guns.