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Japanese Internment Camps Essay

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Accepting Responsibility for the Past

The present United States government should take up responsibility for the leaders before them and try to bring justice to the injustice they have plagued our present society with. The U.S. government believes it determines the fate of all people within our country rather than the people of the country determining its fate. First, it tried to eliminate the Native American culture and mold their behaviors to fit our own standards. Second, the U.S. government once again discriminated against its own citizens due to their origin when they chose to force thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps. These actions cannot be wiped from the slates of our history for what has happened cannot be changed, but it is up to our government leaders to make amends. To begin, the United …show more content…

During World War II, over a 100,000 Japanese Americans were forced from their homes to live in hastily put together internment camps. These internment camps were unsanitary and inhumane. In an excerpt from “Remarks on Signing the Bill Providing Restitution for the Wartime Internment of Japanese American Civilians”, paragraph 1 states, “More than 40 years ago, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race, for these 120,000 were Americans of Japanese descent.” The excerpt goes on to state that tens of thousands of Japanese Americans remained loyal to the U.S. including those in the internment camps. Many became vital soldiers in the war they were being discriminated against for due to actions that did not involve

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During World War II 110,000 people, a majority of them US citizens, were forced into internment camps in the United States without trail. Some might think that these people were possibility Germans and Italians, but the truth is that they were actually Japanese. At the time Japanese Americans were an advancing minority of great workers pre-World War II.

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One reason why the U.S government’s decision was not justifiable is because many of the Japanese-Americans were innocent people who legally received their American citizenship. For example, in Monica Sone’s “Camp Harmony”,

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163 Words | 1 Pages

As opposed to righteous view that America was safeguarding its position in the war, the Japanese American internments were created out of resentment and racial prejudice fostered by other Americans. As the article “Personal Justice Denied” stated, the internments were led by “widespread ignorance of Japanese Americans contributed to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and anger at Japan” (Doc E, 1983). It may seem like a precautionary cause to make internments but there aren’t any other extreme measures for other fronts. Caused by a hatred stirred by media and society’s view, many people disdain the Japanese.

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In december 1941 rumors spread about sending the Japanese to internment camps which means leaving their homes and being separated from their families This is very important to me because they could have handled this a better way , sixty two percent of the internees were united states citizens ! The Japanese internment camps was a forced relocation and incarceration during World War II of between 11,000 and 120,000 people of japanese ancestry who lived in the pacific coast . Ten internment camps were established in California , Utah , Arizona , Colorado , Arkansas and Wyoming . “ President Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 authorizing the war relocation authority to force 110,000 Japanese and their american-born children into relocation

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The would make sure that all traitors would be unable to hurt the United States again. Yet the majority of the people taken into the internment camps were innocent and loyal to the United States, rather than Japan. Even the president realized that was they were doing was unjust. He told the Sacramento Bee that it is one thing to bring people to internment camps for the safety of a nation, but it is another to take away the rights and possessions of innocent, loyal Americans. (14).

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The internment of Japanese-Americans in the US was completely unjust and violated the constitutional rights of many. It classified the Japanese as ‘dangerous aliens’ as they were unrightfully sent sent from their homes to militarized locations under fear of espionage during WWII. ” The American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker group), and the Japanese-American community—countered that singling out a particular group for internment was an unconstitutional infringement of their liberty” (Japanese-American Internment). There were legal organizations against the interment under the proof that it was unconstitutional. This included American citizens targeted by their own government because of their ethnicities.

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How would you feel if one day you were told to leave your whole life behind to live in captivity just because people halfway across the world did something wrong? This horror story was all too true for the thousands of Japanese Americans alive during World War II. Almost overnight, thousands of proud Japanese Americans living on the west coast were forced to leave their homes and give up the life they knew. The United States government was not justified in the creation of Japanese internment camps because it stripped law-abiding American citizens of their rights out of unjustified fear.

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The Question of Japanese Internment During World War Two During World War Two approximately one hundred and ten thousand Japanese, citizens and aliens, were evacuated, interned and either relocated or imprisoned in desolate camps on the basis of their loyalty to the United States. This was justified as a military necessity because the Japanese were thought to be a threat to the security of the west coast of the United States. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, age-old stereotypes that had their origin in the pioneer age of the old west were reactivated and turned against the Japanese as they had been used against the Chinese in years previous. These exclusionist attitudes have their origin back when the white prospectors had to compete with

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The Japanese were not placed in internment due to their race/ancestry for three reasons: They were the ones responsible for their removal, Justice Black’s statement that “Exclusion of those of Japanese origins were deemed necessary because of the presence of unascertained number of disloyal members of the group, most of whom we have no doubt were loyal to this country” (Japanese Interment pg. 3) and because the United States were at war with the Japanese Empire. The first reason the Japanese were not placed in interment due to their race/ancestry was that they were the ones responsible for their removal. If the Japanese did not attack Pearl Harbor the United States would not have joined World War II in the first place. Roosevelt would not have created the War Relocation Authority to relocate them either. The Japanese-Americans also failed to voluntarily remove themselves from the West

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792 Words | 4 Pages

The force of the relocation and the internment of Japanese americans had changed many of their life's experiences dealing with dehumanization taking away their freedom

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844 Words | 4 Pages

Hostility brought bitterness, fights, and riots amongst each other. Japanese Americans were labeled as "loyal" or "disloyal in 1943. Those who were found disloyal were moved to a segregation center within one of the camps. In 1944, the Japanese were being drafted from camps to WWII, which brought refusal. Mentioned in Japanese Internment Camps, "Throughout World War II, U.S. courts upheld the legality of internment, ruling that the military had the power to take precautionary action against Americans who shared an ethnic heritage with the enemy" (Benson, 2009, pp. 810-814).

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1317 Words | 6 Pages

Millions of Americans sacrificed to help the United States fight in World War ll. These sacrifices included fighting in the war or helping improve the war effort. For Japanese Americans though, their sacrifice was being imprisoned in internment camps. Representative Leland Ford was the first member of Congress to publicly argue for the internment of Japanese Americans. A statement from his anti-Japanese campaign in California is, “As justification for this, I submit that if an American born Japanese, who is a citizen, is really patriotic and wishes to make his contribution to the safety and welfare of this country, right here is the opportunity to do so, namely, that by permitting himself to be placed in a concentration camp” (Document A).

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762 Words | 4 Pages

It had dented the US’s history culturally accepting and stemmed from its long history of Asian immigrants. The internment camps were a result from the Executive Order 9066 issued by the pressured President, were endured by the interns with its poor conditions, and was shut down after further US investigation. This proves that the Japanese-Americans, who was accused of being saboteurs, in those hard times remained loyal to their country and got their well-deserved

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1056 Words | 5 Pages

This report, “Personal Justice Denied: The Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians’’, focused on what had lead up to the decision to intern Japanese Americans and what happened afterward. In an excerpt released from the report reads, “Widespread ignorance of Japanese Americans contributed to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and anger at Japan” (Document F). In other words, the idea of interning Japanese Americans came from fear and anger. This was an emotional decision, not a strategic one because Japanese Americans were not a danger to the United States and the citizens. Above all, the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 was an emotional decision done out of fear and

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673 Words | 3 Pages

World War 2 was a devastating time that has caused cruel actions such as prejudice towards minorities and self hate of their own citizens in the past. For example, the Pearl Harbor bombing had influenced numerous Japanese American citizens due to their appearances that showed them as enemies to American citizens. In addition, the act of the Japanese American Internment Camps was significantly unnecessary because this was an unjust law that was racist and hysteria, also, Japanese Americans are citizens of the U.S not from a foreign land at all, and lastly, Japanese Americans had served in World War 2 that extinguished many fatalities in the past. First of all, this act had displayed cruel racism and hysteria towards Japanese Americans. For this reason, it states in the web article “From Wrong to Right: A U.S Apology for Japanese Internment,” “John Tateishi says the experience was both humiliating and disorienting.

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