Looking Like the Enemy

Looking Like the Enemy: Japanese Mexicans, the Mexican State, and US Hegemony, 1897–1945 is a 2014 non-fiction book by Jerry García, published by The University of Arizona Press. It discusses the treatment of Mexicans of Japanese descent and Japanese nationals in Mexico during World War II, as well as the overall history from 1897 to the war.

This book is the first one in English that specifically focuses on the Japanese Mexicans; Michael Palencia-Roth of the University of Illinois wrote that the Japanese populations in Brazil, Peru, and the United States were more commonly the focus of such studies. The author argued that Mexico had more lenient actions towards the ethnic Japanese during the war than the United States.

Background

García is a professor of Mexican American Studies at Eastern Washington University.

The book has interviews, with the text containing excerpts of two of them. J. M. Starling of Choice Reviews stated that these two stated that the Japanese Mexican people removed to internment camps perceived their experiences to be "humane" and that the interviews "frame several of the book's key arguments".

The author used the 1976 book México y Japón en el siglo XIX and the 1982 book Siete migraciones japonesas en México, both by María Elena Ota Mishima, as well as the 1990 book Relaciones entre México y Japón durante el Porfiriato by Enrique Cortés, as the bases of his research.

García used content, including descriptions from people, images, and government documents, from the archives of Mexico and the United States. Toake Endoh of Hawaii Tokai International College wrote that material from Japan in the research "is disproportionately scarce".