Good War Myth Research Paper

Some of the Japanese had come down to America to give their children a better life and so they don’t have to be limited to the to just the low or mid-class although when they go to the states they were discriminated against because they were from Japan and because they didn’t follow the same culture as all the other Americans. Even though they should’ve had their human rights those rights were completely revoked from them after the Pearl Harbor bombing, in which president Roosevelt initiated Executive Order 9066 in which all Japanese, including Japanese Americans get sent to internment just because they had Japanese heritage. They stayed in these internment camps for three and one half years living in poor conditions where they had to build their own huts all due to the fact that the president had feared what they could do for revenge

At the end of World War II, too many people were homeless. The world economy had collapsed, and much of the world’s industrial had been destroyed. That was the horrible time of all time. Besides that, for more specific examples about how bad of war is, I will analysis this article “Aftermath of War” was written by Robert L. Wieman, and it was written about his looks back on experiences when he was a bomber pilot in Allied-occupied Japan.

The autobiography illustrates personal experiences of discrimination and prejudice while also reporting the political occurrences during the United States’ involvement in World War II. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government unleashed unrestrained contempt for the Japanese residing in the nation. The general public followed this train of thought, distrusting the Japanese and treating them like something less than human. In a country of freedom and justice, no coalition stepped up to defend the people who had lived there most of or all of their lives; rather, people took advantage of the Japanese evacuation to take their property and belongings. The government released demeaning propaganda displaying comical Japanese men as monsters and rats, encouraging the public to be vigilant and wary toward anyone of Japanese descent. The abuse of the Japanese during this period was taken a little too lightly, the government apologizing too late and now minor education of the real cruelty expressed toward the nation’s own citizens. Now we see history repeating itself in society, and if we don’t catch the warning signs today, history may just come full

“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 other major factor in allowing the war to be dubbed as “the best war ever” was the economic prosperity. “The U.S. gross national product increased 60 percent during the war,” (114) a statistic which differed greatly from those of the depression years of the 1930’s. The reality under the cover of myth was repulsive. “. . . the coast was littered with shattered boats, tanks, trucks, rations, packs, buttocks, thighs, torsos, hands, heads.” (101) Americans never witnessed the carnage. To add insult to injury, when soldiers on leave told of these horrors, they were considered cowards and victims of

Most Japanese-Americans were doing fairly well before WWII, but because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the government decided they could not trust the Japanese-Americans. Any one with a Japanese last name was relocated to an interment camp inland. During WWII, many Japanese-Americans living in the states were second and third generation Americans. Rumors spread throughout the U.S. that Japanese-Americans were spies that were assisting the Imperial government with attacks on the U.S. The forced evacuation had many Japanese-Americans leaving property, and possessions behind for white American neighbors to take. The government shipped approximately 110,000 Japanese-Americans to relocation centers. No one stood up for the Japanese-Americans even though their American civil liberties had been violated. Some Japanese-Americans were granted permission to leave the interment camps to provide wartime labor like picking different

The Japanese Americans sustained many injustices during the pre-World War Two era, including exclusion from traditional establishments and occupations. It was noted, “the [economic] argument and the discriminatory measures are plain contradictions” (Goto 105-106). Although the stated goal of Californians was to have a unified population, their actions belied their true motives. The colossal nature of the assimilatory feats performed by Japanese dictated that “even Californian agitators themselves, in their moments of private reflection, admit the wonderful power of adaptability of Japanese,” but, “in public they do everything to prevent the process of assimilation from running its natural course” (Goto 106). Often, the bigoted owners of white establishments barred people of Japanese

World War II was a time of deliberate hate among groups of innocent people who were used. While the first thought that comes to mind is the Jewish people kept in Concentration Camps throughout the Holocaust, this is not it. Japanese-Americans were persecuted due to the fact that they looked like citizens of Japan, who had attacked the United States on December 7th, 1941 at the naval base, Pearl Harbor. This hatred toward the group was due to newspapers creating a scare for the American people, as well as the government restricting the rights of Japanese-Americans. The Japanese-Americans were mistreated during World War II for no other reason than being different. These men, women, and children were loathed by the American public for looking like the people of the Japanese army that had attacked the United States. These people were only hated by association, even though many had come to the United States to create a better life for their family.

Some Japanese- Americans had lived in the states all their lives yet they were treated as complete foreigners. Clearly an unjust consequence to everyone for the actions of the few. When the war that caused the internment camps ended, people thought they would finally be free again, as they were supposed to be in the land of freedom and opportunity. People had become so paranoid that it struck a lightning bolt of hatred nationwide. Once people where returned to their houses, they were welcomed with their houses trashed and

In Michael C.C. Adams’ The Best War Ever America and World War II, the author explains and clarifies the truth about the many myths in and about the war. There are many reasons as to why the war was seen as something positive and as a “good” thing for our nation. Motives such as the media and Hollywood’s glamorization of the war, economic growth within the nation after the Great Depression, and government agenda all had part in this crazy misconception we all know as

During the WWII, around 127,000 United States citizens were imprisoned. Their crime was just being in the Japanese ancestry. Although there wasn’t a lot of concrete evidence, Japanese American citizens usually remained loyal to their home country. Presence of Japanese on the west coast increased the anti- Japanese – Paranoia. A security risk for the people in America on the west coast increased since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In the early 1940’s and as the war progressed, the treatment and perception of Japanese Americans, most of the western parts, like California, got progressively worse. The prejudice against the Japanese steamed from the treatment of the Chinese in America and how they provided cheap labor for the United States, cheating “regular Americans” out of their jobs. Once the Japanese started to have a significant demographic in California, concern swept across “Americans” once again, fearing cheap labor and lack of jobs once more. As tensions grew, the American paranoia of a Japanese invasion/revolt also increased. Once the American government decided that they would relocate all of the Japanese Americans to a “safer” sight, to prevent any spies from

To the Americans, the Japanese, unlike the Germans, were all a race to be hated. Because the Germans

I grew up going to a Japanese elementary school and I learned many things about what Japanese people experienced in America in the past. I learned that the Japanese were prejudiced, especially during World War Two. Japanese people were put into internment camps just because they were Japanese.

The reasons for immigration to the "land of opportunity" called America in the early years of our country are clear. America was seen as a place where an individual could start over with an equal chance of success or failure, offered jobs, no matter what country he or she came from. This proved to be true for Irish immigrants, German-American immigrants, English and black immigrants that came to America. However, this was not the same for many of the Japanese immigrants. One of the many challenges Japanese immigrants faced when they arrived in the United States was the efforts of politicians, intellectuals, and community leaders to label Japanese an "undesirable race." Known collectively as the "anti-Japanese exclusion movement," these efforts ranged from introducing discriminatory legislation that discouraged further Japanese immigration, encouraging and enforcing boycotts of Japanese businesses, and spreading propaganda that offered a multitude of reasons to justify the exclusion of Japanese from the United States.