How was propaganda used between the Japanese and the U.S. to depict one another?

As is so
often the case in the heat of conflict, propaganda was used by the Americans and the Japanese to
dehumanize each other. The Japanese routinely portrayed the United States as a decadent country,
morally weak and enervated by luxury. The war that the Japanese were waging was presented as a
moral crusade as much as anything. The Americans were also depicted as colonial oppressors, from
whom the Japanese were liberating the subject peoples of East Asia. Westerners in general, but
Americans in particular, were shown as shallow and materialistic, incapable of comprehending
higher values such as sacrifice, duty, and honor. According to Japanese propaganda, Americans
weren't just the enemy, they were "devils."

For their part, the
Americans played on the popular opinion of the Japanese as being racially inferior. Racist
caricatures abounded in war-time propaganda, in...