Fear And The Forced Evacuation

Roger Daniels’ book Prisoners without Trial is another book that describes the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This piece discusses about the background that led up to the internment, the internment itself, and what happened afterwards. The internment and relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II was an injustice prompted by political and racial motivations. The author’s purpose of this volume is to discuss the story in light of the redress and reparation legislation enacted in 1988. Even though Daniels gives first hand accounts of the internment of Japanese Americans in his book, the author is lacking adequate citations and provocative quotations. It’s

Imagine what it would be like to be told at a moment’s notice that you must pack up and be relocated from your home all because of your ethnic background? It doesn’t seem possible that it happened, but it did. And it is still happening to specific ethnic groups. During World War Two and the bombing of Pearl Harbor the United States Government, President Roosevelt and many American citizens did not trust the Japanese. They needed to be in internment camps like the one at Newell California that is shown above. The Japanese people could be monitored and watched to prevent any underground activities. My husband and I live 55 miles from an old Japanese Internment Camp, called The Tulelake Relocation Center or the Tule Lake Segregation Center.

America would ever participate in that kind of craziness again, they were wrong. The relocation of Japanese citizens in 1942 after fear of a second Pearl Harbor like attack was just as crazy. In February 1942, Roosevelt instituted Order 9066, which called for the relocation of every person of Japanese ancestry, American citizen or not. The main reason for this executive order was the fear of Japanese spies living amongst the American people in preparation for another attack. Due to this large amount of fear around 117,000 people were moved out of their homes to one of ten internment camps located around the country. Just as the townspeople in Salem feared the accused witches and decided to kill around 20 people because of fear, the United States government used fear to take every single family near the pacific and cut off the lives they had come to know. It was the fear that had built up in the minds of Americans through propaganda and

They moved the Japanese-Americans for a reason. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, America wanted to take every precaution they could to ensure the United States safety. In doing so, the army and government took the precaution to create the internment of Japanese-Americans. They moved them to camps that they would keep them in and provide decent living conditions. The United States was justified in moving the Japanese Americans because some lived near vital naval bases that they could have infiltrated, there was no problem in doing so, and it would protect all citizens of America.

The American government evacuated approximately 120,000 Japanese Nationals, American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and placed them in internment camps at the beginning of World War II. Japanese Americans were forced from their homes and businesses, forced into relocation camps in the deserts of California, Arizona, into the mountains of Idaho, and small towns in the southern United States. These were Japanese American people of unquestionable loyalty to the United States. These were citizens denied the rights of normal citizens under the United States Constitution. Americans who had volunteered to fight in the war for the United States, and against the Japan. They wanted to fight for the United

Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, racial tensions increased in the United States, especially on the West Coast (Divine 898). The anti-Japanese sentiment led to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which gave military officials the power to limit the civil rights of Japanese Americans (Danzer 802). The order also authorized the forced relocation of all Japanese Americans to concentration camps (Divine 898). These camps were located in desolate deserts and flatlands in the interior of the United States (Sato 67). Two thirds of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forced to relocate were “Nisei”, or native born American citizens (Divine 898).

     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

officials eventually began to recruit these internees into the American army. Not only was WWII a war about political alliances and geographical sovereignty, but it was also a war about race and racial superiority throughout the world. Propagating this idea, Dower (1986) argues, “World War Two contributed immeasurably not only to a sharpened awareness of racism within the United States, but also to more radical demands and militant tactics on the part of the victims of discrimination” (War Without Mercy: p.5). In elucidating the racial motivations and fallout from WWII, Dower helps one realize the critical role that race and racial politics played during the war and are still at play in our contemporary world. An analysis of this internment process reveals how the ultimate goal of the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans and the United States’ subsequent occupation of Japan was to essentially “brainwash” the Japanese race into demonstrating allegiance to America.

“Herd ‘em up, pack ‘em off, and give ‘em the inside room in the badlands”(Hearst newspaper column). Many Americans were feeling this way toward people of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The feelings Americans were enduring were motivated largely by wartime hysteria, racial prejudice, and a failure of political leadership. The Japanese-Americans were being denied their constitutional rights, they were provided poor living conditions in these relocation camps, and by the time apologies and reparations were paid to the Japanese, it was too late.

The Japanese-American author, Julie Otsuka, wrote the book When the Emperor was Divine. She shares her relative and all Japanese Americans life story while suffering during World War II, in internment camps. She shares with us how her family lived before, during, and after the war. She also shares how the government took away six years of Japanese-American lives, falsely accusing them of helping the enemy. She explains in great detail their lives during the internment camp, the barbed wired fences, the armed guards, and the harsh temperatures. When they returned home from the war they did not know what to believe anymore. Either the Americans, which imprisoned them falsely, or the emperor who they have been told constantly not to believe, for the past six years imprisoned. Japanese-Americans endured a great setback, because of what they experienced being locked away by their own government.

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps

They were instructed to evacuate their homes within a 48 hour period of time. They had no constitutional rights they had previously had before. The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment was completely disregarded and their internment was only justified by a statement that we needed to be protected from any possible espionage. Their basic constitutional rights were disregarded and they were treated as prisoners. The Japanese-Americans were not allowed to leave the internment camps, under any circumstances, until the war was finished. They had no sliver of freedom and had to transition into this new way of life without choice or reasonable

The Japanese and Japanese-Americans were already discriminated based on race, their language and looks long before the government decided to isolate them in a hostile area. All peoples of Japanese ancestry were to be forcefully terminated from their homes and put in internment camps. After 3 years working, fighting in wars, dying of sickness and so much more hardships, all the 120,000 people were released back

The Japanese-American Internment was a necessary choice, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It helped to make our nation secure during times of extreme emergency and it also helped the US government to keep their enemy under watch. “The story of how Japanese American soldiers from the war’s most highly decorated US military unit came to be there is just one part of a remarkable saga. It is also a story of one of the darkest periods in American history, one filled with hardship, sacrifice, courage, injustice, and finally, redemption. It began more than a hundred years ago” (Sandler, 2013, p. 6). At the turn of the 21st century began the immigration of the Japanese to America for various reasons, but all with one thing in mind: freedom. “We talked about America; we dreamt about America. We all had one wish – to be in America” (Sandler, 2013, p. 6). The decision by these many people was a grueling and tough decision, but they knew it would benefit them in the long run. “…like their European counterparts, they were willing to risk everything to begin life anew in what was regarded as a golden land of opportunity” (Sandler, 2013, p. 6). When they came to America, they were employed and were able to begin their new lives for the first part of it.

After the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, life in the U.S. had changed. It was the first time in a long time that America was attacked on its homeland. This national security threat was a big shock to the people. The Japanese had to suffer the consequences of their attack. Just as the Germans developed concentration camps for the Jewish during World War II, the Americans set up "relocation" programs better known as internment camps to keep all the Japanese. The reason the Japanese were moved into these camps was because they were suspected of being spies. They were forced to live there for up to four years and were not able to continue with their own lives as they were before while they were living in these camps.