Think about the way the public was informed in the 1940's though. They got their information through news radio, and newspapers. There was no global network of instant informative sources like the internet of today. People were scared, and it was easy to exploit that fear, and sow the seeds of misinformed racism to make every asian looking person out to be the enemy.
We have a much greater capacity for rapid, accurate information around the world, but we've gotten really lazy to where we make assumptions based off of headlines without ever reading the article.
Branden