United States Women 's Histories

The U.S. internment of people of Japanese descent during the 1940s was a major event in U.S. history, but it is often overlooked by many. It affected hundreds of thousands of people of Japanese descent, whether they were citizens or not. The incarceration of those placed in camps was affected mentally and it caused many of the internees to develop PTSD or otherwise commonly known as post-traumatic stress disorder (Potts, 1994, p. 1). The camps affected how the Japanese were viewed in society during the time period of the camps and following the liberation of them. It also changed how the Japanese viewed society. This paper will focus on the cultural and social aspects of the Internal Improvements.

The role of American women has changed significantly from the time the nation was born, to the modern era of the 1950s and 1960s. Many people, "... believed that women's talent and energies ... would be put to the better [use] in the new republic." (Clinton 3) Clearly showing that society has seen the importance of the women's talents and that their skills can be very useful, exploited this and thus, the change of the women's role was inevitable. Society has understood that the roles of women played an important role on all parts of life.

There are many things that happened to Japanese-American immigrants during World War 2 that people in this time period aren’t really familiar with. A story from a Japanese woman, Jeanne Wakatsuki-Houston, who was born and lived in this era, with help from her husband, James D. Houston, explains and sheds some light during the times where internment camps still prevailed. The writing piece titled “Arrival at Manzanar", takes place during her childhood and the Second World War. In the beginning, Jeanne and her family were living a calm and peaceful life in a predominantly white neighborhood, until disaster struck the world and they were forced to move due to escalating tensions between Japanese Orientals and white Americans. At the time, Japanese-Americans, like Jeanne, were forced to live in an internment camp, which is a prison of sorts, due to the war with Japan. The text is being told through a first person point-of-view in which Jeanne herself tells the story through her experiences during the war. In that story, which contains only a part of the original text, much of the setting took place either prior to and during the time she was sent to the internment camps and describes her struggle with it. This story clearly states the importance of family and perseverance which is shown through her use of pathos, definition, and chronological storytelling.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the internment of Japanese Americans on the West coast of the United States. On going tension between the United States and Japan rose in the 1930’s due to Japan’s increasing power and because of this tension the bombing at Pearl Harbor occurred. This event then led the United States to join World War II. However it was the Executive Order of 9066 that officially led to the internment of Japanese Americans. Japanese Americans, some legal and illegal residents, were moved into internment camps between 1942-1946. The internment of Japanese Americans affected not only these citizens but the

In The First American Women, Sara M. Evans describes the changing roles of the respective populations of indigenous, white European, and black slave women, from before Columbus’s arrival to the American Revolution, and how the perception of these roles were shaped by the sociocultural context of each group. For example, although indigenous women in North America had significant political and economic power, especially initially, most white European settlers did not recognize this power-- their Eurocentric lens conveying women as inferior-- and thus they instead saw these female political leaders as slaves, basing this conclusion on a comparison to black slaves.

In the autobiographical excerpt from "Nisei Daughter" by Monica Sone called "Camp Harmony" and the novel Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, both of the main characters and their families are relocated to a Japanese internment camp in the western United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. They experience extreme hardships while being interned at the camps due to their race, however, although faced with such austerity, the Japanese-American families are able to overcome it through years of suffering. Between the two autobiographies, Farewell to Manzanar and “Camp Harmony,” there are various similarities and differences sharing the pain and joy of living in these internment camps.

Among this group of “Nisei” was the Uchida family from Berkeley, California. Yoshiko Uchida, the youngest daughter in the Uchida family was a senior at the University of California at Berkeley at the time of the attacks. Years later, Yoshiko became a prolific writer of children’s books (Sato 66). In her book, “Desert Exile”, published in 1982, Uchida gave a personal account of the evacuation and incarceration of her family during World War II (Sato 66). Uchida’s book raises awareness to the specter of racial prejudice and the hope that no other group of Americans would have to endure this type of injustice and violation of their human rights (Sato 66).

Startled by the surprise attack on their naval base at Pearl Harbor and anxious about a full-fledged Japanese attack on the United States’ West Coast, American government officials targeted all people of Japanese descent, regardless of their citizenship status, occupation, or demonstrated loyalty to the US. As my grandfather—Frank Matsuura, a nisei born in Los Angeles, California and interned in the Granada War Relocation Center (Camp Amache)—often

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

As soon as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ceased, terrified and uneasy Americans across the nation scrambled to find someone or something to blame the surprise attack on, and they did. All Japanese Americans, whether they actually had something to do with Pearl Harbor and were conspiring with Japan or not, were put into internment camps and were shamed and stripped of their pride. Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston is a touching and a brutal awakening memoir of young Jeanne Wakatsuki’s experience in Manzanar, an internment camp located in California. Readers are introduced to the suddenness of the evacuation, the treatment of Japanese-Americans in the internment camps, and more specifically how

This investigation will explore the question: To what extent was the interment of the Japanese Americans during World War II based on racism? The first source to be evaluated is The Internment of Japanese Americans, which is a book with a collections of chapters, each with a different accredited authors. Often the authors are Pulitzer Prize winners while others are merely professors that have spent their time writing about the subject they teach about. Because of the many different authors used, each chapter is broken down into different viewpoints. The book provides a wide range of insight on the background of the Japanese American internment camps, the controversy over the internment camps and even personal narratives of people’s stories being taken to court. With each chapter a different viewpoint, the book allows a more omnipotent point of view in order to fully determine to what extent the interment of the Japanese Americans during World War II was based on racism.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor transformed the lives of virtually every single person of Japanese descent living in America. No matter how much they tried, they could only wait for their final destination: a crowded and subpar American concentration camp that gave very minimal wages and barely had enough resources to live. They met this with the common phrase shikata ga nai, or “it cannot be helped”. Between the life of Jeanne Wakatsuki depicted in the book Farewell to Manzanar, who was in one of these concentration camps, and a boy in an average household in times without world wars raging on, there are, expectedly, many more differences, both emotional and physical, than the similarities, between our lives.

James D. Houston showed the pains and suffering of every Japaneses American who were sent into the work camps of the United States. But he doesn’t do this alone he uses the help of his co-writer Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Together they write an accurate depiction of the life of a Japanese girl who at the age of 8 was put into one of these Japanese works camps. After being sent to this camp, her family is destroyed leaving a lasting impact on her life. The emotion of this book as well as the information brought into this book all ties back to Jeanne’s goal as wanting to show ethnic diversity in the United States.

For Japanese people living in America, WWII spelled disaster. Not only was their country of origin at war with the country they lived in, but public opinion combined with the unchecked power of Executive Order 9066 forced 110,000 Japanese people out of their homes and into inhospitable Internment camps scattered across the US. Jeanne Wakatsuki's autobiographical Farewell to Manzanar captures the internment camp’s effect on her family. While Jeanne and her father are at the heart of the story, the war also has a profound effect on Jeanne’s mother “Mama.” Jeanne’s mother experiences very negative circumstances during internment including feeling dehumanized and witnessing the disintegration of her family. One surprising slightly positive impact

The signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on 2 September 1945, aboard the deck of USS Missouri marked Japan’s unconditioned surrender to the Allies, officially drawing an end to the Second World War (Weber, 1997). Indeed it was the end of the Second World War, for the Japanese people to ‘begin a new life’, an encouragement for Japan to rebuild, for the society to restructure, also a new age for a Japanese woman’s position in the Japanese society to be re-evaluated. In this essay, I explore the status of the Japanese women between the pre-war period and the post-war period, as well as hope to address the areas of discrimination that could be observed from the pre-modern times and in the contemporary society.