Essay On Japanese Internment

On December 7, of 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, inevitably marking the entrance of the United States in World War II. Nearly ten weeks after, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. Thus authorizing the relocation of any American citizen with Japanese descent, away from their homes and businesses. By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were sent away to remote areas, created purely by the military to segregate them from other races in the United States. For more than two years, these American citizens were forced to live in isolated areas with difficult living conditions and harsh treatment by their military guards. President Roosevelt's decision in ordering Executive Order 9066

These citizens were being forced into isolated areas for having Japanese ancestry at the time when World War II began. General John DeWitt clearly states, “In the war in which we are now engaged racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted… It, therefore, follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today.” During his report on the evacuation of Japanese American citizens, DeWitt displays his public disgust and fear of all those with Japanese blood, including those who associate themselves more with the United States rather than Japan, by inferring that it makes no difference if they are American because will always be considered a ‘Jap’. Regardless of the clear racial discriminative intentions, others still find ways to counter these arguments with the excuse of it being in the best interest of all Americans at the time; yet, these camps promoted the idea that anyone with at least 1/16 of Japanese blood was dangerous to the rest of America. Discrimination towards Japanese citizens in American, and Asians in general, was not new during the time of internment camps. A Community Grows, an article written by Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project describes, “Soon after their arrival [to the US], Japanese Americans became the targets of severe and racially exclusive forms of discrimination, much of it originating in California. Beginning with organized labor, and including many of the same actors who had earlier agitated against Chinese immigrants, what would become known as the anti-Japanese movement was embraced by nearly all sectors