Japanese Americans During World War 2 Essay

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During World war 2, Japanese Americans were viewed as a threat to national security. To ensure the safety of all Americans, thousands of Japanese Americans were forcefully placed in internment camps. Numerous people lost their lives, separated from their families, and lost their homes and other valuable family possessions. Though safety was the top priority, individual freedom should not have been offered as a sacrifice. With the allocation of Executive Administrative Order 9066, President Roosevelt violated individual rights, created mistrust between citizens, and misused government powers. It’s not right that individual freedom should be sacrificed in the name of national security. During World War II, Japanese Americans had a tough time. …show more content…

collected and through various channels transmitted information to the Japanese Empire." During those times, people believed that this information was accurate, which created fear within the community, fearing they would be killed by their local Japanese Americans because they were Japanese. The national and West Coast media vilified the local Japanese community as if they had been implicated in espionage. In combination with other factors, the timing of the report proved to be a turning point in public opinion concerning the mass removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Based on it, the government decided to intern people based on their Japanese …show more content…

He recalls, "As a young kid, I really didn’t think too much of it." talking about the internment, "we’d say, ‘well, it’ll be over in a few days or a few weeks and it’ll be back to normal,’ kind of attitude. We use to have visitation, and the white people, the church members would come down… to see the people who were incarcerated." They would visit people who were incarcerated, he used the term "incarcerated" since the place didn’t feel like a home but a prison cell and when they tried to shake their hands, they would say "Get away from there," and that’s when he realized that they don’t trust them. And he implied that what he was taught in school beforehand about the ideas of democracy and the protection of freedom "went down the drain." Japanese-American children weren’t able to attend school as they were limited in education books, which made it hard for them in the future. But the damage went beyond economic loss. Many Japanese Americans never fully recovered from the shock and trauma of the move, coupled as it was with the disruption of careers and economic upheaval. The trauma and discrimination they faced while in the camps also led to long-term mental health