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Examples Of Prejudice In Pearl Harbor

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Executive Order 9066: Roots in Prejudice
Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor crippled the US Naval fleet and killed thousands of soldiers and citizens but more significantly, it destroyed American’s sense of safety and the utopian belief that we were beyond the reach of the world’s problems. The resulting fear that pervaded American society, spread like wildfire and led to an emotional and irrational chapter in American politics that would ignore Japanese citizens’ constitutional rights to appease the hysteria. Americans’ response to the attacks on Pearl Harbor revealed decades of existing prejudices as they turned their anger on their fellow American citizens who were of Japanese descent. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attacks, on February 19, 1942, …show more content…

Further yet, the government again complied with the fears of Americans with states from California to Louisiana passing Alien Land Laws that prohibited any ‘alien ineligible for citizenship’ from purchasing agricultural land or leasing it for long periods of time (Ng 9). Japanese immigrants felt the negative sentiment against them as the laws were directed at them, but they still managed to assimilate their lives to American culture. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war on Japan, the anti-Japanese sentiment that had been accumulating over the past hundred years met its boiling point with the Department of Justice’s issuance of the first federal regulation which discriminated directly against American citizens of Japanese ancestry (Daniels 27). It closed land borders of the United States to all enemy aliens and all persons of Japanese ancestry (ibid). These early influences on the government imposed by biased Americans planted the seed for the passing of Executive Order 9066 and eventual internment of the US Japanese

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The narrative begins with the first two chapters focusing on assessing Roosevelt’s evolving attitude toward Japan and Japanese-Americans, during his pre-presidential years and his first two terms in office. Continuing, Robinson changes directions and focuses on the origin and implementation of the internment policy, beginning with Roosevelt’s decision to issue Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, the authorization of relocating Japanese-Americans from the West Coast into internment camps, the subsequent controversy over with Japanese-Americans deemed “loyal” to the United States, and the decision to finally close the camps in 1946. The final chapter concludes with Robinson attempting to understand how Roosevelt, whom historians have celebrated for his strong commitment to individual rights, could have supported such an unjust policy. Robinson argues Roosevelt’s “past feelings toward the Japanese-Americans must be considered to have significantly shaped his momentous decision to evacuate Japanese-Americans from their homes … whether citizens or longtime resident aliens, [Japanese-Americans] were still Japanese at the core and should be regarded as presumptuously disloyal and dangerous on racial grounds” (p. 118 -

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When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japanese Americans were suspected of spying on the US Government and selling information to Japan. This was enough reason for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the deportation and incarceration of over 110,000 Japanese Americans, using Executive Order 9066. This was not justified, and was not fair, to the Japanese Americans. 62% of the internees were United States citizens, and 99% of all Japanese Americans were not spies. Executive Order 9066 was an order signed and issued during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Forty years later, the Civil Liberties Act was issued preventing something like this from ever happening again. As part of the Civil Liberties Act, an apology was issued to all Japanese Americans that had been victims of Executive Order 9066 and each victim received $20,000 (Burns). The country will forever be changed because of Executive Order 9066. Thousands of lives were uprooted and forever changed because of the fear that was gripping the country.

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After the attack on Pearl Harbor the United States was in an uproar. Americans were now in fear of Japanese spies and they placed their suspicions on ordinary Japanese American citizens. President Roosevelt was swayed into ordering Executive Order 9066. President Roosevelt was not justified in ordering Executive Order 9066 due to violation of constitutional rights, blatant racism, and long term negative consequences caused by the internment of Japanese American citizens in 1942. Franklin Roosevelt used poor judgement when he ordered Executive Order 9066 because of the racism behind this executive order.

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556 Words | 3 Pages

The case of Korematsu v. US, which was sparked by Executive Order 9066, remains a significant event in the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. This order, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, resulted in the forced relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The basis for the case was the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which was challenged on the grounds that it violated the civil rights of Japanese Americans. The historical context surrounding this argument was the fear and hysteria fueled by the attack on Pearl Harbor and widespread anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. This sentiment was unwarranted, as the Munson report states that Japanese immigrants

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791 Words | 4 Pages

How would you feel if you have to sell your house and move into a prison like camp in just a few days? Many Japanese had to experience this in 1941. The Japanese Americans got this unfair treatment because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 during World War two. However, there are more factors that caused Executive Order 9066 (internment camps for Japanese people) in 1941. Economical, cultural, and political causal factors caused the congress to agree on Executive Order 9066.

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Executive Order 9066 Introduction: Japanese Immigrants moved to U.S. to look for peace and good jobs. Soon Japanese immigrants spread throughout the Northwest to provide farm labor, hoping to eventually own their own farms. Later on, the Japanese bombed the U.S. naval base in 1941. After that the President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Executive Order to relocate 110,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps. During this, many Japanese Americans suffered in these camps, like sickness and some family were separated.

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Akiko Kurose, who was 16 and attending a Seattle high school at the time, described when, after the Pearl Harbor attack, “one of the teachers said, ‘You people bombed Pearl Harbor’”, referencing Akiko’s Japanese heritage (Document 1). If, indeed, this was the general feeling of all non-Japanese Americans, than it is easy to see how amassed public hatred could lead to the internment of the hated. The government was even aware of the minimal threat posed by the interned—The Munson Report, delivered to President Roosevelt by his Special Representative of the States Department, Charles Munson, has such a statement as follows, “There is no Japanese ‘problem’ on the Coast. There will be no armed uprising of Japanese” (Document 4). And Mary Tsukamoto, who was an American of Japanese heritage, was forced in 1942 to an internment camp with her husband and child, leaving their strawberry farm behind, described her shock, “We couldn't believe that they would need all of us to quit our work to produce our fruit, food for victory... and then be put away”(Document 3).

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Jayna Marie Lorenzo May 23, 2023 Historiography Paper Professor Kevin Murphy Historiography Final: Japanese Internment “A date which will live in infamy,” announced President Roosevelt during a press conference after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Due to the military threat by the Japanese on the West Coast, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering for the incarceration of all people of Japanese descent. The Order forced about 120,000 Japanese Americans into relocation centers across the United States where they remained in captivity until the war ended.

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Pearl Harbor Versus September Eleventh On December 12th, 1941, a Japanese task force bombed Pearl Harbor, an American naval base stationed in Hawaii. On September 11th, 2001, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by Al Qaedian suicide planes. Both attacks greatly devastated America and created prejudice attitudes and actions towards a certain race. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American government arrested as many Japanese-Americans as it was capable of.

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This causes President Roosevelt to sign the Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. More than two-thirds of those interned under the Executive Order were citizens of the United States and had never shown any disloyalty toward the country. But, because of suspicion of the Japanese and didn’t trust them. The article says “The Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes and businesses, carrying only a limited number of suitcases, with items necessary for their basic needs in the harsh conditions of the camps.” Suspicion caused the Americans to be cruel to the Japanese-Americans just because of their

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448 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout the history of our country hatred has been common, as Immigrants enter our homeland they are looked down upon and thought of people who are “destroying” this nation. All these new people coming in are only seeking new opportunities but are discouraged by other because of their ancestry. Humanity’s unjust behaviors can be seen in two different aspects of America 's history, we first see it in the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII and the period of the Salem Witch trials. Arthur Miller’s dramatized play, The Crucible can be correlated to the event of Pearl Harbor because of the similarities between the Japanese Americans and the characters in the play; they both demonstrate the lives of civilians being ruined, a mass hysteria caused by fear of their neighbors, and lack of a just court system. To being with, it was the year of 1692 when the “witch hunts” had officially began, fellow citizens were being accused of being involved in witchcraft.

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382 Words | 2 Pages

Even prior to the creation of the internment camps, however, the American government wanted to safeguard itself from the Japanese work ethic, their community solidarity, their ethnic enterprise, and their more than promising prospects of success. Out of necessity many Japanese laborers became farmers upon arriving in America and the government, both on state and federal levels, was afraid that the Japanese immigrants would take over the agricultural enterprise in states such as California and hence the economy as a whole (Takaki 188-189). As a means of prohibiting this many barriers were erected—segregation of Japanese American students, Alien Land Law of 1913, the ruling in Takeo Ozawa v. U.S., and the Immigration Exclusion Act. Among these

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703 Words | 3 Pages

The United States chose to discriminate against the Japanese before the attacks on Pearl Harbor due to the large flow of Japanese immigration with in the west coast. The fact that a good portion of this discrimination and racism was shown through various different print sources is very astounding, especially since most of this took place in 1941, the year in which the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the island of Pearl Harbor. Simon Worrall shows some examples of discrimination in his non-fiction article How Racism Arrogance, and Incompetence Led to Pearl Harbor. He says, “If you read the American magazines and newspapers in 1941, it’s amazing how the Japanese were considered a funny, curious people who were technologically inept. They were supposedly physiologically incapable of being good aviators because they lacked a sense of balance and their eyes were not right”

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Thesis statement: Though many speculate that the act of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) while not doing so on Europe (Germany and Italy) was racially motivated, racism played little to no role in these bombings. The United States of America and her allies were willing to end World War II at any cost, had the atomic bombs been available they would have been deployed in Europe. In the 1940’s there is no doubt that the United States of America was engulfed by mass anti-Japanese hysteria which inevitably bled over into America’s foreign policy. During this period Japanese people living in both Japan and the United States of America were seen as less that human.

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