Essay On Japanese Internment Camps

1240 Words5 Pages

Imagine being stripped of your life’s business, your home and all of your personal belongings, just because you are of Japanese descent. To some, this might sound unrealistic, but to Japanese Americans this was a real life horror of 1942. The evacuation and incarceration of Japanese Americans into internment camps has been a long since fight for justice due to the violation of civil liberties and basic human rights of the American people, and how people's lives were personally affected. After the Bombing of pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, Japan had become America's biggest threat. America had retracted from the war in Europe and set their sights upon Japan. As for the Japanese Americans, they were a target too. Just two months later, …show more content…

However, it did not specifically target those of japanese descent but rather broadly stated that anyone that was a threat to the United states during war time. Executive order 9066 allowed the War Department Broad powers to create military exclusion areas (Niiya, Public Law 503). These exclusion areas are known as internment camps, built by the military, surrounded by barbed fence. Before the order was even put into action there was already “anti-japanese” activity occurring.-- “weeks before the order, the navy removed citizens of japanese descent from terminal island near the port of Los Angeles” “... just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI rounded-up 1,291 Japanese community and religious leaders, arresting them..(Smithsonian Institute, Japanese Internment Camps)”. Another case involving pre-Executive Order Japanese discrimination, a letter to President FDR's private secretary Grace Tully, attorney general Assistant James H. Rowe, jr. made it evident that the relocation of japanese citizens was under way by saying “ tell the president to keep his eye on the japanese situation in California. It looks like it will explode any day now. There is tremendous public pressure to move all of them out of california…(James