Japanese Concentration Camps Essay

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

The internment and cruel treatment of the Japanese in the U.S. stemmed from a fear of a full-pledged invasion from Japan and also from years of racial prejudice

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.

“ I think of the close friends who are now at the mercy of the cruelest monsters ever to stalk the earth.” This is what Anne Frank wrote about the Nazis in her diary. Although, the Americans weren’t much nicer to the Japanese. During the 1940’s these 2 groups of people,the Jews and Japanese-Americans, were being discriminated against. Though for very different reasons. Nazi concentration camps and Japanese internment camps were not essentially the same thing because Jews weren’t being treated like people, both camps served different purposes, and the Japanese were not being killed like the Jews .

Written in the 1940s, Arthur Miller’s play the crucible explores the hysteria, persecution, and lack of due process that characterized the 1692 Salem Trials. Arguably, the themes explored in this play resonate with many modern and historical events. Arthur Miller himself saw strong connection between the events surrounding the Red Scare in the 1950s. When juxtaposed with events of the crucible, themes of hysteria, persecution, and lack of due process also emerge from a study of the Japanese Internment Camps. In December 7 1941, one of the American colonies was attacked by Japan. After the Attack on Pearl Harbor, America was feared of the

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Many Americans were afraid of another attack, so the state representatives pressured President Roosevelt to do something about the Japanese who were living in the United States at the time. President Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066 which allowed local military commanders to designate military areas as exclusion zones, from which any or all persons may be excluded. Twelve days later, this was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast. This included all of California and most of Oregon and Washington.

     Unfortunately, the Japanese-Americans living on the west coast were given no time to show what their loyalties were: they were expelled from the area. They were shipped off to remote locations in the more barren sections of the country. The living conditions at the camps were inadequate at best. Residents were forced to endure extreme cold and extreme heat, cramped living spaces, poor meals, and a lack of indoor plumbing. The whole time, they were under the watchful eyes of armed military police. They were treated as prisoners.

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

We rushed ourselves, the evacuation of the Japanese seemed merely a minor incident of the war. But as the shock of finding ourselves at war gradually dissipated, the nation began to be annoyed about many aspects of the Japanese-Internment. They began to ask whether it squared with our democratic ideals. If the issues were unclear at the outset, they became increasingly involved with each new step of the program. As the danger of an invasion of the west coast receded, measures were taken which no

The fight for basic civil rights and equality continued into the 1950s, when the Walter-McCarran Act was passed in 1952, which created a much better process for immigrants to become “normalized” citizens (Mercier, 4). Japanese Americans continued to pressure Congress to further amend damages from internment, and it was not until 1988 that Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act. After decades of civil rights advocacy, Japanese internees received monetary compensation for their internment, and

Was Japanese internment for security purposes or just plain jealousy and fabrications from Americans? In February 1942 President Franklin D Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which allowed military officials to move anyone of Japanese descent into internment camps. The U.S interned 110,000 to 120,000 people of Japanese descent (⅔ of which were American citizens) to one of 10 internment camps because of concern about national security, social/racial attitudes about Japanese and Japanese Americans, and economic issues including land, business ownership , and labor competition. There was no evidence to convict these people but they sent to the camps which were like prisons. Many Japanese had come to the west coast, which caused many Americans to be very nervous. Many Americans thought that the Japanese were spies in disguise.

The trial was the Japanese-American Internment. The Japanese invaded the American land. Because of that, all people of a Japanese descent were seen as an enemy. The Americans felt as if they could no longer trust anyone who obtained ancestry of the Japanese race because they could have a connection with the people who invaded America. As a result, Over 120,000 Japanese were imprisoned during World War II. America felt this was the best way of protecting the wellbeing of all American citizens. These camps were very similar to the concentration camps that Hitler imprisoned people in. Almost two thirds of people who were imprisoned in the camps were Japanese Americans. Some of these Japanese Americans never even visited Japan before and had little connection with their heritage. This did not matter to the government.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which made every person of japanese heritage on the east coast uproot and move to ten different internment camps. No matter what their loyalty or citizenship they were forced to get up and go to camps established in either California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. After all said and done this ended up at over one hundred and twenty thousand japanese americans. Sadly most Americans don 't know why they were moved from their homes, how they were removed, and how they were treated within these camps.

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.