[krapp]

>Do you really believe that it was because Japan is dominantly a non-Christian culture and not because they look different?

I believe it was both - they're two sides of the same coin. Look at the propaganda of the time - the Japanese were portrayed as being fundamentally inhuman in a way that Europeans weren't. The myth of the "inscrutable Oriental" has been around in the West for a very long time, the Japanese mind and morality were considered to be incomprehensible.

That Japanese Americans looked different probably made this xenophobia easier to act upon, though.