Essay On Japanese Americans After Ww2

With the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, Americans decided to draw from their experience in World War I and remain neutral. To reinforce the fact that the US would not be participating in the War, between 1935 and 1939 Congress passed Neutrality Acts to keep the US from ever being pulled into foreign affairs. Even though Americans were politically neutral, this did not stop many Americans from having opinions on the War. Many of the Americans who were European immigrants showed sympathies for their former countries and were not quiet in their support. In addition to this, the actions of the US were also not particularly isolationist as they proclaimed as it became clear that the United States quietly lended more support to the Allied Powers rather than the Axis. As the war dragged on however, the events of Pearl Harbor

Japan’s actions led to many American political and military leaders to believe that the Empire of Japan was going to launch a full-scale attack on the United States’ West Coast. The swiftness of Japan’s conquering of portions of Asia and many Pacific islands from 1963 to 1942 worried many Americans, who saw it as a sign of the imperviousness of the Japanese military. As an extension of the fear of Japanese attack, a trend of hostile sentiment toward Japanese-American citizens emerged. Many Americans feared the possibility of fifth column activity, as displayed in the illustration of the cartoon. Their belief was that the Japanese-Americans would join forces in secret to attack from within in order to assist in Imperial Japan’s external attack. To address these concerns, President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066, creating the Japanese internment camps, which harbored around 110,000 to 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry as well as people with simply an Asiatic