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Cause Of Japanese Internment

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On the morning of December 7, 1941, a large Japanese aircraft carrier strike force launched a surprise military attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Five battleships and nine smaller warships were sunk and three other battleships were heavily damaged. In addition, 188 planes were destroyed and 2403 people were killed. In 1942, two months after the Japanese attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War Henry Stimson to move civilians as necessary into “relocation camps”. Military officials on the West Coast, acting under the directive moved over 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. This controversial event was known as the Japanese-American Internment. …show more content…

For more than 200 years, people of Japanese Ancestry have made their home in America. They came to this country because of the poor political and economic conditions back home, as well as the possibility of finding employment as sugar planters in America. During the period of 1891 to 1900, approximately 26,000 Japanese immigrated to America (see Appendix I). During the period of 1901 to 1910, approximately 130,000 Japanese immigrated to America (see Appendix I). There was a fivefold increase in the number of Japanese immigrants in ten years. This proliferation of Japanese in America led to the birth of a movement known as the “Anti-Japanese Movement.” This movement was led by anti-Japanese organizations such as the Japanese Exclusion League, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, and the American Legion, as well as prominent political leaders. Influenced by these organizations, politicians passed a series of legislations limiting the rights of the Japanese and their possibility of immigration. In 1913, politicians passed the California’s Anti-Alien Land Act, which prevented Issei, first-generation Japanese Americans, from owning land. In 1907, the government passed the Gentlemen’s Agreement in which President Theodore Roosevelt severely restricted Japanese immigration to America. Immigration was cut off completely when Congress passed the National Origins Act of 1924, which prevented immigration by aliens who were deemed ineligible for citizenship. One Issei who wanted to become a U.S. citizen was Takao Ozawa. He arrived in the United States as a student in 1894, and attended schools in California, including the University of California, Berkeley. In 1914, he filed an application for U.S citizenship. His application for citizenship was denied because the court declared that Ozawa was “in every way eminently qualified under the

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