The Progressive War

War can be loud and visible or quiet and remote. It affects the individual and entire societies, the soldier, and the civilian. Both U.S. prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese-American citizens in the United States during WWII undergo efforts to make them “invisible.” Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken hero, Louie Zamperini, like so many other POWs, is imprisoned, beaten, and denied basic human rights in POW camps throughout Japan. Miné Okubo, a U.S. citizen by birth, is removed from society and interned in a “protective custody” camp for Japanese-American citizens. She is one of the many Japanese-Americans who were interned for the duration of the war. Louie Zamperini, as a POW in Japan, and Miné Okubo, as a Japanese-American Internee both experience efforts to make them “invisible” through dehumanization and isolation in the camps of WWII, and both resist these efforts.

Everyone that even looked to be Japanese would be mistrusted and be labeled as “the enemy.” On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt issued an executive order which rounded up every Japanese person that lived in the US as they were seen to be threats to the nation. Many endured names such as being called an “alien.” In March, the government shipped the Japanese to relocation camps where they were sure to be not in contact with the enemy. Any former possession that the internees might had had were usually gone shortly afterwards as their lands would be repressed. Despite the fact that most of these Japanese were Nisei, native-born American citizens whose parents were Japanese, and that some volunteered for military service they were still put into these camps. They were housed in barracks and used communal areas, for washing and eating. Over half of those taken in were merely children. These camps were then overseen by military personnel. All internees over the age of 17 were given a loyalty test were they were asked questions. 120,000 Japanese were taken in, and only 60,000 survived. In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed legislation which awarded formal payments of $20,000 each to the surviving internees. At the end of the war some remained in the US and rebuilt their lives, others however were unforgiving and returned to Japan.

Many were innocent children, women and men approximately 120,000, all held in Internment Camps across the country. Children and adults had to stand in line for many things, including eating and going to the bathroom and spent 4 years incarcerated surrounded by barbed wire.

When the Nazi’s arrested Jews and sent them to concentration camps, the conditions were terrible. The men, women, and children in the camps were not treated with the rights they deserved, since they were forced into harsh labor, placed in killing centers where gas chambers were used to effectively and quickly murder thousands of Jews a day, and experimented on to find new medicines and so the German scientists could find out how much pain and torture they could endure until death. In America, over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated into camps during the period of World War II. Even though these Americans were not treated as harshly as the Jews in concentration camps, they lost

Hamdi et al. v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al. could prove the undoing of the Bush administration’s legal defense of the abuses at Guantanamo Bay. In this case, four British citizens are suing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as well as a host of Army and Air Force Generals and policy apparatchiks for allegedly authorizing the use of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The four were captured in Afghanistan, either by Americans or America’s ally, the Northern Alliance, and transported to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where they were held for over two years. Their status there was not as enemy combatant, which guaranteed them certain protections under the Geneva Convention, but rather as

Award-winning author and well-known journalist, Dave Eggers, in his biographical work, Zeitoun, illustrates a Muslim-American family’s troubling experiences in a post-9/11, Islamophobic society in the wake of a natural disaster. Eggers’ purpose is to critique the flaws of the American government’s response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to reveal the human tolls of its injustice and discrimination. Using ethos, logos, pathos, and imagery, he adopts a poignant yet disappointed tone in order to bring awareness to such negligence and to convince the American people of the consequences of racism. Eggers effectively uses metaphors throughout Zeitoun to provide a better understanding of complex situations throughout the book.

Around 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals or citizens that lived in the United States were completely stripped of their rights as citizens and interned in camps across the US. There were 10 camps and they were based on race and ancestry instead of the activities of the people interned. The relocation of Japanese-Americans during WWII was one of the most horrible violations of civil rights in American history. According to the census of 1940, around 127,000 people of Japanese decent lived in the US, the majority on the West Coast.

In 1942 thousands of Japanese were inturned after an attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. The U.S had been neutral up until that point, but the attack brought America into the war. The Japanese were interned because of the risk of espionage, at least according to the government. Although the government thought it was okay, the Government should not have inturned thousands of Japanese.

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

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.

On 26 September 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who born in Syria, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport while he was waiting for his flight . Mr. Arar was held in solitary confinement without any charges by United States authorities for two weeks without having access to a lawyer. The United States government suspected him of being a member of Al-Qaeda and deported him back directly not to Canada, but to his country of birth Syria, where he was tortured . Arar was held in Syria for nearly a year, during that time he was tortured, until he return to Canada. The Syrian government later admitted that Arar was not involved in anything and he was “completely innocent ”. There are too many questions that need to be answered,

Anne Frank was a European Jew and Monica Sone was a Japanese American. Monica told her story of Japanese American prisoners being held captive in America, in the excerpt “Camp Harmony”. How is it possible for American citizens during times of war to be taken into captivity while in the U.S.?

Shortly after the United States entered into war with Japan, the federal government initiated a policy whereby 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and herded into camps, 2/3 of these people were actually United States citizens. They were incarcerated without indictment, trial, or counsel - not because they had committed a crime, but simply because they resembled the enemy. These were similar to concentration camps that the Germans were using for the Jews, though no one was being killed and Japanese Americans were allowed to work within the camps. Not many Americans knew about the camps at that time, and some still don't know today. Like discussed in class, it was an embarrassing moment for this country. The book that was assigned in class, Desert Exile by Yoshiko Uchida, told the story of a family who lived through these horrible times. As we discussed in class

In January of 2009, newly elected President Barak Obama annouced the signing of an executive order that states that Guantanamo Bay would be closed within the year; he did not fulfill this promise though. In November of 2009 President Obama announced that the base would not be closed due to not being able to find somewhere for the detainees to be relocated to. (Cohn, 2015) The fact of the matter is that Americans are the ones paying for this inhumane detention center. With the closure of the Guantanamo Naval Base detention center America tax dollars could be used in a much more effective way. We have veterans who are homeless, yet the money Americans are putting in the government is being used to torture other humans. In Guantanamo Bay there is a practice that is called pharmacologic water boarding. This is where guards administer the drug Mefloquine despite the knowledge the Pentagon had of the side effect, which include suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, and anxiety. This drug is meant to treat malaria, however it was administered to prisoners whether they were presumed to have malaria of not. Leopold said, “The government has exposed detainees to unacceptable high risks of potentially severe neuropsychiatric side effect, including seizures, intense vertigo, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, aggression, panic, anxiety, severe insomnia, and thoughts of suicide. These side effects could be as severe as those intended through the application of the enhanced interrogation techniques.” The effects of this drug are not easily reversed. In fact, with the massive doses administered to the detainees cause the side effects to take weeks or even months to wear off. When the drug began being administered to prisoners the psychiatric cases rose in extreme amounts. This drug has been said to be “human experimentation or enhanced interrogation”. The mind altering side effect of the drug may

Another aspect of Guantanamo that received a strong reaction was the access that interrogators, psychologists, and psychiatrists working at Guantanamo have to detainees’ medical files. This allows them to target detainees individually, and is against medical ethics stated in the Geneva Conventions. Though this protocol has not been sanctioned by the