Japanese Internment Camps Violations

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In World War II under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt a document was signed that changed the lives of more than 120,000 people. This document was Executive Order 9066 which disclosed the orders of evacuating all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast (Lecture 12/1). This decision came to realization two months after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 1941. This event sparked paranoia with the President and the American people, because there were Japanese people living within the U.S. and they feared that the Japanese population would invaded America thinking that they were loyal to Japan. Due to the concern of the public, President Roosevelt was pressured to sign Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 (Lecture …show more content…

According to Bedford “during World War II, the United States was more careful about protecting the civil liberties of its citizens…however there was one exceptions, the “relocation centers”. How can there be an exception to human rights? The replacement of Japanese Americans into internment camps was one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties and human rights in American history. To name a few constitutional rights that were violated in this event, the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, law enforcement and FBI searched homes of Japanese Americans without search warrants, seeking any items identified as having alliance to Japan (Bedford). In addition, the right to an indictment or to be informed of the charges, also was violated, “when the FBI came and picked him up…a guy who had followed all the rules, respected authority and was a leader in the company, all of a sudden he was behind bars for no reason as we can see the forced removal and subsequent detention of Japanese Americans without being told of their crime or the charges against them was indeed a violation of their human rights. As well as freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, the treatment of Japanese Americans in the "relocation center" was a method of cruel and unusual punishment on the foundation that conditions were not exceptionally adequate, their hospitals were understaffed, and their medical care was poor as well as for the food which was dietetically deficient (Lecture 12/1). These are put a few of the human rights that were