Japanese Internment Camps During war, fearful nations can be lured into a ruse of deception led by the media, and if the false postulations are not suppressed, they have the tendency to spiral downwards into an avalanche of mass hysteria. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War Two, a widespread suspicion of Japanese espionage within the nation was magnified due to medias influence. As a result of the nation’s hysteria, the government seized control and forced thousands of innocent people into “assembly centers” where they had everything, including their freedom, stolen from them. Had this wartime hysteria ceased to exist, the US government would have recognized that Executive Order 9066 exhibited an excessive and discriminatory use of government power. This jurisdiction …show more content…
However, they were evidently an act of government corruption. The racial discrimination, and unprofessionalism of those in congress truly represented the impact of hysteria on the human race during a time of agitation. Because the Japanese accounted to less than .01% of the US population in 1940, they were a very small threat, if any. They were virtually powerless, as their money and many of their belongings had been confiscated by the government and they lacked national leadership. They had no political power, no one to defend them, and the few leaders of the Japanese American Community, had been imprisoned previous to the camps for suspected wrongdoing. In addition, the entirety of public opinion was against them. Had any citizens acted out against the government’s decision, they would surely have been imprisoned or potentially created an even larger issue. Their only choice was to cooperate with the government and accept all consequence, because it was a better alternative than violence and pointless bloodshed (Japanese American Internment in American History