Essay On Forced Internment

The Japanese-American internment did not have a logical reason for its doing. “There is no Japanese “problem” on the coast,” (Munson, 3). Munson states there is no problem on the West Coast with the Japanese. As a “rebuttal”, Lt. Gen. DeWitt states in a government report that ”it is better to have had this protection and not to have needed it than to have needed it and not to have had it,” (DeWitt, 1). DeWitt proposes the argument that America did it out of fear of another attack by the Japanese. However,

I first came across an organization dedicated to preserving Japanese dignity throughout history and beyond: The Japanese American Legacy Project (JALP). Its website indicated that they "were frequent targets of prejudice and political attacks for 50 years before World War II" (Densho). This site represents the organization's interests in their entirety, and describes adequate background information, which I found to be helpful. Unemployment and low wages could be equivocated to Japanese infiltration, which soon became the basis for groups to rise up in opposition, thus associations such as the Japanese Exclusion League were born. However, problems really began when businesses actively recruited Asian immigrants for tedious duties. Labor unions fired back with rallies for local elected officials to "remove all individuals of Chinese heritage from California" (Densho). The government reacted to such forceful pressure almost immediately. In 1882, a series of congressional exclusionary acts eliminated, for a period of time, what was known to the west coast as "yellow peril" (Densho). These findings were strangely new to me, so I began to browse other sources for

Americans citizens should recognize the importance of the Japanese American Internment Camps. After the was made attack on Pearl Harbor, a U.S. military base was bombed, Americans were filled with terror. World War Ⅱ was an all-out event like no other. Residents living on the Pacific Coast of the United States were emotionally unstable and thought the Japanese were going attacks again but this time their homes or cities. Many Americans were accusing the Japanese living in the U.S. for being accountable for bombing of Pearl Harbor, which cause racism and suspicion towards the Japanese Americans living in the United States.

Heading into the postwar era, they found comfort in forming tight-knit communities that preserved cultural traditions. In 1991, a community also raised funds for a “$10 million cultural center in Ontario to honor those relocated or interned” (Mercier 4). Internment showed America how strong-willed and resilient Japanese Americans are, but it further reinforced the deeply rooted racism that is present. One of the better ways to look at the negative impacts internment has had on the American racial landscape, is to look at a state of the U.S. that did not participate in internment for the most part; Hawaii. Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not consolidated into camps, and during World War 2, many of them made “exemplary contributions in the form of volunteer soldiers and war workers” (Robinson, 2). This is just one example of how Japanese Americans could have contributed to the war effort and community development if they were not interned in the other states. Not only could they have helped during the war, but racial relations would not have been strained to the extent they are

It is interesting to note that, despite the bombard of Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not imprison,the entire Japanese American population in Hawaii-which made up closely 40% of the population of Hawaii itself were retained. The incident that so few Japanese Americans were incarcerated in Hawaii suggests that their mass removal on the West Coast was racially

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved Executive Order 9066 authorizing the Secretary of War to establish military zones, paving the path for the deportation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps. The order was given as a result of war hysteria and disregarded evidence from the FBI, along with other intelligence agencies, that revealed the Japanese-American was not a threat. Japanese-Americans were the victims of fear, prejudice, and suspicion. This Research paper explores how Japanese-Americans came to be interned and how they were treated during their forced internment. Using primary and secondary sources, the criminalization of Japanese-Americans by the general public and the United States government as well as the lingering prejudice from the immigration of the Japanese to the United States. The United States government is based on freedom and equality but it proceeded to unjustly intern American citizens based on prejudice and fear. President Gerald Rudolph Ford repealed Executive Order 9066 in 1976, thirty years later. A formal apology and a $20,000 payment was gifted to Japanese-Americans for being wrongly interned. The fact that the United States government gave a formal apology acknowledges the fact that Japanese-Americans were treated unlawfully.

It is deplorable how easily the American government faltered in its responsibility in upholding the rights of all American citizens, as well as how easily it was signed away. The United States influenced by the effects of racial prejudice and mass hysteria, which had been developing since the end of the First World War, lead to what were seen as reprimandable decisions in overruling the rights of Japanese-Americans. With the major influences of fear-mongering caused from a risen tensions of events in the East, beginning the Second World War in the Pacific, such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and later, direct attacks in the United States at military base, Pearl Harbor in 1941, were all proponents into the development of an era of exceptions,

The Japanese had come to America for the search of a better life. They worked has a plantation worker, farmer, mill workers and rail road worker. Even though they had worked hard to make a living, they were not always appreciated. In 1910, Frank Miyamoto’s father was a mill worker and was constantly harassed by the whites. Eventually, he left the job from the uncomfort of harassment. In 1913, an act was passed which did not allow the Japanese to own land. And by 1922, the Japanese could not become neutralized citizens and the U.S. tried to limit the Japanese population. But that was impossible because the Japanese population was growing by the next generation and was citizens by birth right. The children went to public school like any other

The year is 1942. A World War rages again across the continent of Europe, while the Imperial Japanese military dominates in the Pacific. Tensions rise as the United States and Japan both prepare for the possibility of war following the invasion of Manchuria. At home, feelings are hostile to Hitler 's Germany, but citizens show a reluctance to send aid as the US is still deep in a depression. Feeling against Imperial Japan, however, are extremely negative. The citizens of the United States are far more accepting of immigrants from Germany than they are of the Japanese who are here in small pockets of pacific states. However, that all changed on December 7th, 1942. The attack on Pearl harbor claimed over 2000 American lives and marked a serious political and cultural turning point in American involvement in world affairs. The attack on Pearl Harbor significantly changed the way Americans viewed the Japanese and Japanese-Americans. It was these sentiments and nationalistic fervor that eventually lead to the internment of Japanese Americans under the guise of national security. The internment of Japanese Americans is subject to contentious historical debate over whether or not the actions were necessary to secure US security, and whether it is morally permissible for the federal government to imprison people based on race and nationality. The moral implications of this debate extend even into modernity. The Japanese internment in World War Two was a complex and mass

Many of the stories told today are stories about people who dealt with racism. Many people during World War II felt that the claims made against the Japanese Americans were false and unjust. The feelings of many Japanese Americans have never been forgotten, maybe repressed and ignored, but not forgotten. The prejudice in our country has not left, or faded away, but been subtly hidden in today's

The years between 1939 and 1945 marked a territorial domination and military power demand, years that brought fear amongst the global nations and settled battles for expansion during World War II. After the military offence on Poland by the German military power, in Europe Germany sought to dominate and expand its territories and power through the continent in alliance with Italy and Japan battling the head leaders of the Allies; United Kingdom, France and The Soviet Union (Lindrum, 2013). In the conquest of domination of the Pacific and whole Asia, The Japan Empire took actions against The United States and China within the Northern Pacific. In the hopes of disabling the U.S. military and pushing back its advances in defenses systems and military fight power, on December 7th, 1941 the United States of America suffered the bombing of the Pearls Harbor naval base and the lose of over 2,300 naval troops (TNA, 1942). Cough by surprise the American nation demanded for action against Japan after the devastating attack, promoting the inevitable action of the president Franklin D. Roosevelt to isolate further terroristic actions, intelligence leak and sabotage by declaring war against Japan, the rest of the Axis members and authoring the Executive Order 9066 in 1942.

In this seminal work on the Pacific war John Dower, Professor of History at the Michigan Institute of Technology and Pulitzer Prize winning author, discusses the effect had in the Allied war with Japan. It is the author's opinion that racism and prejudiced attitudes played a role in the development of atrocious behaviors seen in the Pacific Theater. Dower supports his thesis by effectively and exhaustively researching his topic. Dower creatively integrates and combines sources from almost every are of period life. In his studies he includes war diaries, political speeches, journal articles from both sides, and perhaps most effectively,

Yet the situations of Japanese Americans in 1941 and Arab Americans in 2001 are different in hopeful ways. The oppression of Japanese Americans came from more than just military fears and racial hatred. Its main engine was economic. The historical record is clear that the most effective advocates for evicting the West Coast's Japanese Americans were their white business competitors, especially in agriculture. The attack on Pearl Harbor presented white farmers with a chance to cap off a program of economic nativism that had been in place for years.

America was built on a principle of freedom, justice, and equality, thus inviting people from all different parts of the world to pursue success while still retaining their ethnic identity. However, despite what this nation was truly supposed to stand for, there were grim periods in which it did not truly uphold its core values. During World War II, in which the relationship between the U.S. and Japan was at its worst, many Japanese- Americans faced discrimination and injustice. Americans claimed that this needed to be done as a national emergency and for the peace of the nation. From the sources “War Message” by Franklin D. Roosevelt and “Desert Exile” by Yoshiko Uchida we can piece together the events that led to discrimination against the Japanese and how it affected Japanese- Americans.

In the fear left behind the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were subjected to a violation of their citizenship rights when the American government put forth an effort to protect the American people. They essentially kidnapped the Japanese-American citizens, both immigrants and American-born citizens, and in doing so, they broke the trust of Japanese immigrants with the government despite their apparent loyalty and opened even more racial prejudice for the Japanese people especially.