Japanese American Internment Camps Essay

Although Japanese American internment camps provided a safe harbor for Americans in knowing that the U.S. government was safe from sabotage, it was an unjustified infringement upon the rights of Japanese Americans. The first amendment states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech” (The Bill of Rights). These Japanese had no say when they were being taken away to these camps. This euphemistically termed “evacuation” was “a time of chaos and trauma for Japanese Americans” (Japanese…

At Terminal Island near Los Angeles, California there were nearly 3,500 first and second generation Japanese. The military wanted all suspicious members of this community out in 48 hours. During this time, Dr. Yoshihiko Fujikawa described what he saw, saying he saw house wives being abused while cars, refrigerators, furniture and the like were confiscated (23 Nishimoto). The Japanese in Hawaii were treated differently, unlike the communities at Terminal Island and Areas 1 and 2, under General Dellos…

decided to freeze Japanese assets to avoid further expansion. However, this precaution did not help the Americans because soon after Pearl Harbor was bombed December 7, 1941, approximately twenty-four hundred Americans were killed. At that point, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt felt it necessary to sign Executive Order 9066, which stated that the Japanese-Americans will be relocated from the West coast to obtain national security. Most of the Japanese-American internment camps were located on the…

Japanese Internment Camps “I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever understand what I mean, if anyone will ever overlook my ingratitude and not worry about whether or not I’m Jewish and merely see me as a teenager badly in need of some good, plain fun.” (p. 153-154) or page 124? Website? There is a strong similarity between the German government who used concentration camps to imprison Jewish people and the U.S. government who interned Japanese Americans. For the Americans, it was thought…

adults who were in charge of the children so that they would be presented in a positive way. Photographs of children playing reveal how the WRA wanted interned Japanese American children to appear carefree and wanted their lives in the camps to seem normal. Photos from all ten camps show boys and girls involved in a variety of American activities: playing games, sports, and playing with pets. One series of photos depicts a group of smiling boys and girls huddled around a table playing the card…

get out of the internment camps. They would rather volunteer for the Army than be stuck in a camp for the rest of the war. They became members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. They fought in Europe and became the most highly decorated unit in the United States military history. This regiment was known for saving the 141st battalion from the Germans during the war. In 1945, the interment of the Japanese officially ended. They began to leave the camps. However, many Japanese did not leave…

shown through the issue of Japanese American internment camps (UDHR). First, the problem of Japanese American internment began in the 1940’s, when World War II left it’s mark on America (Ng xi). On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, taking the lives of thousands and leaving Americans distraught and furious (Ng xi). According to the ¨Relocation & Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II" article from the Japanese American Relocation Archives (JARDA)…

After a few months stay in an assembly center, most of the Japanese Americans were moved to the relocation centers located on gloomy barracks mainly in abandoned areas of the West. (Nextext 37) The assembly centers and relocation centers were built and ran by the War Relocation Authority. Pomona Assembly Center was 1 of 18 centers in California and it was the fifth largest with an average population of 4,755 and on June 20, 1942 held a maximum capacity of 5,434 internees. The internees complained…

The United States put Japanese people in camps, stealing their rights, and placed them in inhumane facilities that no human being should be forced to withstand. By the time America paid reparations, and said their apologies to the Japanese, it was too late. Almost 50 years went by before reparations were paid. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was created in order to give all people that suffered in these camps $20,000 each, however only 82,000 out of 120,000 Japanese people were paid. With…

With this in the back of my mind, my quest for the real reasons that the Japanese were targeted began. I thought of the conflict at Pearl Harbor first, so I set out to find what even incited this original Japanese-American divergence. 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…