Religious practice was treated as evidence of wartime disloyalty against Japanese Americans.

Evidence

That the Japanese practiced the purported pagan religions of Buddhism and Shintoism was further evidence of their disloyalty. In the decades preceding World War II, for instance, Shintoism put many Japanese Americans under suspicion of treason because of the Shinto belief that the emperor of Japan was divine. Consequently, some Japanese stopped practicing their religions from fear of being labeled anti-American. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 344

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how race, religion, and national identity intertwine — parallels the logic of religious suspicion applied to American Muslims today.