Actually, I don't find them rassist. Not really. They're just examples of cultural ignorance of the time, is all. Not to mention, with the era of WWII practically giving birth to comics as such, I think it's practically inherent to the industry of the time. They needed villians, and politically, the Asians were it at the time. I mean, who gets up in arms about portraying the Nazis as inhuman monsters? Yet, both stereotypes are from the same era...
That's just something they brought up from the pulps. Asians were always considered sneaky and conniving because of their insular cultures. A lot of early films and Victorian/Edwardian era books had Asians as the villains.
Uschi also makes a good point about the Germans. I don't see any of the old WWII era cartoons being changed because of how they treated the Germans and their military unlike the representation of Japanese soldiers that have been edited out of cartoons because they were 'racist'.
