What Is Japanese-American Internment In Looking Like The Enemy

America, unfortunately, has a past stained with the cruel treatment of many different groups of people, from the relocation of American Indians and slavery of Africans in the 19th century. This pattern became evident when the United States issued the forced internment of Japanese-American citizens after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The common denominator of these unconstitutional ransoms of civil liberties lies with racial and ethnic dehumanization. In Mary Matsuda Gruenewald’s book, Looking Like the Enemy, she illustrates the dark injustices with her personal account of Japanese-American internment. Just three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. This order forced all

For Mary, internment made her question if she should even consider herself American. Mary struggled to consider herself American when all of her rights had been violated. Mary passionately describes this struggle when she says, “Vulnerability and fragility exposed my old confusion: Am I Japanese or am I American in this barbed-wire camp, about to perform a Japanese dance?” (Matsuda Gruenewald, 69). Mary’s whole definition of who she was changed drastically after the attack on Pearl Harbor and internment began. Mary questioned if she was really an American if her civil liberties and freedoms given to her by the Declaration of Independence could be taken away so quickly and without warning. She illustrates this notion in her novel when she states, “How strange it felt to be saying the Pledge of Allegiance after a forced evacuation to a prison camp.” (Matsuda Gruenewald,

People saw the Japanese people as evil, which meant Japanese-American citizens were seen as evil because of their Japanese ancestry. No other race of people during the war were seen as evil as a whole, only the leaders or the government were seen as evil. White people also saw the opportunity to acquire the property of the Japanese-Americans being evacuated to the camps. Many Japanese-Americans had to quickly sell their belongings, with little to no forewarning. During the internment, there was about four-hundred million dollars of property lost and the owners could do almost nothing about