Internment Camps: The Bombing Of The Nisei Children

Imagine a cool winter day. Snow is falling gently to the ground. Children run into the snow ready to sled and play. The prison guards then come to take the children away from their winter wonderland. In November 1942, almost thirty-two Nisei children were arrested after they had sneaked out of their prison and went to enjoy the gift that winter had brought them (Stanley 42). The Nisei children were children belonging to the Japanese and Japanese-Americans that had been put into internment camps from March 1942-1945. The Japanese people had been placed into the camps due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The bombing of Pearl Harbor then brought the United States into WWII. Then, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Japanese Americans who had left their homes and became american citizens were also being mistreated simply because of their race. The Americans were unable to decipher the Japanese Americans from the Japanese, so most of them went to the camps. Ironically, Japanese Americans who lived in Hawaii did not have to go to internment camps(¨Internment Wrong¨). This being surprising considering the fact that the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese is what started the Internment camps. Over 120,000 Japanese people across America were forced into internment camps; two-thirds of the prisoners were American Citizens (Stanley 6). The people were simply imprisoned based on their ethnicity, without a trial, lawyer, or even a solid reason (Takei). A Japanese man named Fred Korematsu did the unthinkable, and stood up for his rights as a U.S. citizen saying the government violated his constitutional rights as an american citizen(On this Day). He was then defended by Justice Robert Jackson who also thought that the wartime security concerns were not adequate to strip Korematsu and the others of their constitutional rights (Facts and Case). The fact that the americans were, at that time, afraid of the Japanese makes sense, but they could have dealt with the problem in a more civilized manner. Given the short amount of time to make camps for the Japanese, the facilities that the prisoners would spend the next four

The Japanese immigrants moved to America for a better life, but instead they were imprisoned by the place where they sought out freedom. “They died fighting for the words ‘liberty and justice for all’-ideals that were denied to them” (Takei). The men fought for the idea of freedom, even though their families and themselves were being imprisoned. The Nisei demonstrated patriotism by flooding the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle with mass demonstrations of loyalty (Stanley 13). The Japanese people wanted to prove that they were not like the native Japanese people. They had moved to america for a better life, and would not do anything to ruin that opportunity. A group of Japanese people, known as the Japanese American Citizen league, even sent a letter stating, Even certain groups like the Japanese American Citizen league would write letters to the government saying,“There can not be any question…. we in our hearts know we are Americans loyal to America”(Stanley