Essay On Japanese Concentration Camps

While the attack on Pearl Harbor was a devastating time in United States history and the attack being conducted by the Japanese government, it didn’t not justify Japanese Americans being put into internment camps. The fear of a Japanese attack on mainland United States soil prompted the United States government to create these internment camps. Such fear lead to innocent Japanese Americans to live in a way that could be considered inhuman. Of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in the internment camps half of them were children. The conditions of the camps where no way of life and Japanese Americans were forced to live in an undignified life that

     Another factor in the case is racism. Japanese-Americans were subjected to discrimination from the government even before the United States’ entrance into WWII. Five days before the executive order that allowed for removal of Japanese from the west coast, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt speculated the possibility of the Japanese-Americans acting against the U.S., saying that “the very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken” (RTAP, 119). This created a no-win situation for the Japanese-Americans because if they did not act against the U.S., it was still thought that inevitably would. Japanese were denied citizenship before the war, as well (RTAP, 121). Inside the camps, the loyalty questionnaires forced them to either renounce both their allegiance to

Needless to say, they never found one iota of evidence that led the government to believe that they were plotting against the United States. Amendment number six, gives citizens “the right to a fair and speedy trial (Constitution).” The Japanese people didn't even get to pack up their houses, or make sure their homes and farms were being taken care of before they were shipped off. They definitely were not given a fair and speedy trial; they were merely held indefinitely until they were considered no longer to be a “threat.”Amendment number 14 is the one amendment that you can't argue that it wasn't violated. It states, per the Constitution, “everyone has equal protection under the law.” However, this amendment was blatantly withheld during the Japanese's internment. As Jennifer Jones wrote in Time Magazine, “even though America was at war with Italy and Germany they didn't round up immigrants of German and Italian ancestry and place them in internment camps.” Obviously, the Japanese were being targeted and it was masked as a “threat to national security” If immigrants were a threat why wasn't every group of immigrants rounded up? This is a prelude to the fact that the Japanese were being racially targeted. Jennifer Jones wrote in her Time Magazine article that “promoted stereotypes of the Japanese made it seem like they were the enemy. It was a propaganda parade like what happened in Germany, but not to the same

Like all issues involving race or war, the question of whether or not it was legal and ethical to make Japanese Americans move to relocation camps in early WWII is a difficult and controversial problem. The internment of around 50,000 Japanese citizens and approximately 70,000 Japanese-American people born in the U.S. living in the American West Coast has become known as a tragedy and mistake. The government even set up numerous projects to apologize to the American citizens who were wronged (Bosworth). Still, at the time that the decision to relocate was made, the actions were constitutionally legal and seen by many as necessary. The actions were not based on racist feelings. It was, however,

The move to the internment camps was a difficult journey for many Japanese-Americans. Many of them were taken from their homes and were allowed only to bring a few belongings. Okubo colorfully illustrates the dramatic adjustment of lifestyle that Japanese-Americans had to make during the war. Authentic sketches accompany each description of the conditions that were faced and hardships that were overcome. The illustrations were drawn at the time each event described throughout the story took place. Each hand drawn picture seems to freeze time, capturing the feelings and intense anxiety many felt during the war. The pictures assist the author's first person narration and assist the reader in creating an accurate

Despite the papers supposedly claiming Japanese American sabotage, the internment of US citizens of Japanese descent following the bombing of Pearl Harbor was not justified, resulting into violation of the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth amendments.

Just because the country wasn't at peace, rights were taken away from citizens. It took 5 months to reach a final verdict. Yasui was sentenced to one year in prison and was placed into solitary confinement for nine months. Minori Yasui sent for an appeal right after the verdict was made, but it didn't reach the Supreme Court until May 1943. It took time and thought, but the Supreme Court reversed Judge Fee's decision. They restored his U.S. citizenship and sent him to a relocation center in Idaho. This case proves how unjust the United States Government was at the time of World War II (Minori Yasui). Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi another one of the Japanese Americans to stand up to the United States government when the internment order was put in place. By doing so, he put his freedom and life at risk. At first, the FBI gave him the opportunity to sign up for the exclusion order, but he quickly denied. Hirabayashi was taken to jail and had multiple charges put against him. One was for violating the curfew order. The FBI and the court were very unjust towards him. The judge present in Hirabayashi's trial told the jury to find him guilty on both

Japanese Americans filed lawsuits to stop the mass incarceration, but the wartime courts supported the hysteria. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hirabayashi v U.S.,Yasui v U.S. , and Korematsu v U.S. that the denial of civil liberties based on race and national origin were legal. (momomedia.com)Through the relocation program the Japanese Americans suffered greatly. They first endured the shock of realizing they were not being sent to resettlement communities, as many had been led to believe, but to prison. They lost their homes and businesses. Their educations and careers were interrupted and their possessions lost. Many lost sons who fought for the country that imprisoned their parents. They suffered the loss of faith in the government and the humiliation of being confined as traitors in their own country (Michi Weglyn).Throughout the course of World War II, not a single incident of espionage or treason was found to be committed by

It’s WWII, and you’re confined in a tiny room; with your family and possibly another family of complete strangers. This is torture, and it is the opposite of the life and home you had to leave behind. You aren’t in a German concentration camp; you are a Japanese-American citizen living in one of many Internment Camps across the states. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the West Coast (which was very populated with Japanese-Americans) became worried about Japanese spies. Similar to concentration camps, relocation camps included anyone of a certain ancestry. The conditions were dreadful, and luckily it ended in 1946. Japanese-American citizens were being punished for their race; by being sent to relocation camps.

Roughly 70,000 of the Japanese that had been displaced and relocated to theses camps were Americans citizens. There were never charges brought against them but they were not able to petition their incarceration. While incarcerated they lost their homes and all of their property. They tried to argue that this was unconstitutional to the government but the Supreme Court upheld their decision.

Thirdly, the ideals of basic human rights were altered when American government sent the Japanese Americans to prison camps. The reason of imprisonment was the fear of United States government that Japanese-Americans would act as spies and remain loyal to Japanese Government. For example, Fred Korematsu - a Japanese-American who was sent to prison camp after Pearl Harbor was attacked during World War 2 - said that the American government had discriminated him based on his race and had arrested him for being a security risk without a concrete evidence (Document 5). Similarly, the rise of nativism during 1900s had led to segregation of Japanese children in school in San Francisco, California. Moreover, it can be inferred from the “Preamble to

Fred Koremasu was arrested by a drug store in San Leandro, California on May 30, 1942. It was nearly six month after the bombing that tool place in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. The government constructed relocation centers for people who they believed were enemy aliens, which ere people who, “were born in Japan or U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. The United States Army developed a plan to distribute 112,000 people they arrested to lhese locations that have been put in the isolated areas of east California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. Most of who became aknoledgeded about the order of the military followed the orders. Fred was one of those people who did not follow th eorder and that began one of the most well known Supreme Court cases in the United States of America. The court judged accordingly, “All cases of racial discrimination in the United States would be judged according to strict scrutiny” (201). These recordes of the court can be beneficial, but they can also appear as ineffective evidence as a historical source.

On December 1944, President Theodore Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which would soon send Japanese to internment camps around the states. The attack on Pearl Harbor made the sentiment against Japanese flare up to where farmers and other citizens complained to the government about “safety issues” with Japanese that were still loyal to Japan, and that led to the Executive Order being signed. This executive order allowed the United States government to copy the cruelties of Nazi concentration camps. The Japanese were taken from their homes and jobs and got placed in camps where they were asked not to do anything that they did not permit.

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” The Japanese planes that were sent on the mission destructively sunk or at least damaged as many ships of the US Navy as possible. This was the start of the long debated Supreme Court Case Korematsu v US. The case had to do with stripping the civil rights away from a certain group of people, in this case, the Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the US, mainly because of the war going on. The court’s opinion in the case of Korematsu v US was correct because the national security of the Country is far more important than the rights of a small minority of people, the argued dissent was weakly imposed and based mainly on a biased civil rights notion, and the army had reason to fear for the country, seeing as that many of the Japanese people on the west coast were first generation immigrants.

“Learning from our mistakes is not pleasant, but as a great philosopher once admonished we must do so if we want to avoid repeating them,” said President Gerald R. Ford. Fear and hate are two totally different things that shouldn’t be considered the same.Nazi concentration camps and Japanese internment camps are not essentially the same thing because of fear and. hate, the U.S. apologizing vs. Germany not, and the treatment of the two camps. Overall, Nazi concentration camps and Japanese internment camps were not essentially the same thing.