''Little Tokyo, U.S.A.'' is a 1942 American film. Produced in the period just after the United States entered World War II, it was meant to alert Americans to the dangers of foreign agents. It is now controversial for its largely negative portrayal of Japanese-Americans.
Plot
The story, set in late 1941, follows Los Angeles cop Michael Steele (
Preston Foster
Preston Stratton Foster (August 24, 1900 – July 14, 1970), was an American actor of stage, film, radio, and television, whose career spanned nearly four decades. He also had a career as a vocalist.
Early life
Born in Ocean City, New Jersey ...
) as he investigates a series of crimes involving the local Japanese-American community.
The story gradually reveals that the crimes are to cover up a Japanese-American
cabal's efforts to facilitate Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor. After the horrific military attack, the Japanese-American community's demonstrations of loyalty to America are portrayed as patently insincere. Policeman Steele follows the crime trail to an American-born spy for Tokyo, Takimura (played in
yellowface
Portrayals of East Asians in American film and theatre has been a subject of controversy. These portrayals have frequently reflected an ethnocentric perception of East Asians rather than realistic and authentic depictions of East Asian cultures, c ...
by
Harold Huber
Harold Huber (born Harold Joseph Huberman, December 5, 1909September 29, 1959) was an American actor who appeared on film, radio and television.
Early life
Huber was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrants from Imperial Russia, who had arrived in ...
). Takimura tries to throw Steele off the case by enlisting a neighborhood vixen, Teru (
June Duprez
June Ada Rose Duprez (14 May 1918 – 30 October 1984) was an English film actress.
Early life
The daughter of American comedian Fred Duprez and Australian Florence Isabelle Matthews, she was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, during ...
) to seduce him.
Teru invites Mike to Satsuma's house, where she drugs him. As Mike sleeps, Hendricks and Takimura kill Teru and make it look as if Mike murdered her while trying to assault her. Mike is arrested for the murder, and the next morning is in prison when he learns of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Mike then escapes from jail and soon discovers where Takimura, Hendricks and the others meet. With Maris' help, Mike tricks the spies into revealing their activities while the police listen, and soon the gang is rounded up. After Japanese-Americans on the West Coast are taken to internment camps, Little Tokyo becomes a ghost town.
The movie ends extolling the necessity for the internment, with Maris commenting on her radio show that loyal Japanese-Americans must suffer along with the disloyal in the interest of national security. She then reads an excerpt from
Robert Nathan
Robert Gruntal Nathan (January 2, 1894 – May 25, 1985) was an American novelist and poet.
Biography
Nathan was born into a prominent New York Sephardic family. He was educated in the United States and Switzerland and attended Harvard Univ ...
's poem "
Watch America," and urges Americans to maintain their vigilance against espionage.
Cast
Controversy
Filmed in the months immediately following
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...
, Twentieth Century Fox's ''Little Tokyo U.S.A.'' was termed "63 minutes' worth of speculation about prewar Japanese espionage activities" by ''The New York Times''.
The New York Times Movies
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The movie used a quasi- documentary style of filming. Twentieth Century Fox sent its cameramen to the Japanese quarter of Los Angeles to shoot the actual evacuation. However, after the evacuation, night shots were difficult in the deserted "Little Tokyo". Night scenes were filmed in Chinatown
A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...
in Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
instead.
See also
*Racism in Film of the United States
Racism in early American film is the negative depiction of racial groups, racial stereotypes, and racist ideals in classical Hollywood cinema from the 1910s to the 1960s.
From its inception, Hollywood has largely been dominated by white male fil ...
*Yellow Peril
The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter) is a racist, racial color terminology for race, color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East Asia, East and Southeast Asia as an existential danger to the Western world. As a ...
*Japanese American internment
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
*United States Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...
References
External links
Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942)TCM Turner Classic MoviesEncyclopedia of American Spy FilmsChronology of World War II Incarceration
{{Otto Brower
1942 films
Films directed by Otto Brower
American black-and-white films
20th Century Fox films
American World War II propaganda films