Throughout history, hysteria and aberration have contributed to events in which justice was not necessarily reached. In the early 1940s, the American government relocated and confined those of Japanese descent in response to growing fear that they may potentially assist their native country in an attack on America after the Pearl Harbor attack. Similarly, in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, a multitude of innocent people were accused of and convicted for witchcraft due to their abnormality in the strict Puritan society and the greedy nature of their neighbors. The unfair and The Japanese internment and relocation has significant similarities to the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, Japan was determined to set a status as a great
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At the time of the order, the nation was devastated by the attack on Pearl Harbor and citizens feared another attack was imminent. Many people believed that the Japanese Americans were still loyal to Japan and would act as spies despite the fact that almost two-thirds of the internees were United States citizens. While moving to the camps, the internees were only allowed to carry bedding, toiletries and clothing with them. They could only bring whatever they could carry themselves. The Japanese did not know where they were going or for how long they would be …show more content…
United States case that the Executive Order 9066 was constitutional, stating that the need to act against espionage outweighed the individual rights of the Japanese Americans. The court found that curfews places on the Japanese Americans was constitutional during wartime. Mitsuye Endo was the only woman to have an Executive Order case reach the supreme court. The case was ruled in her favor but only following Public Proclamation 21 which allowed Japanese American’s in the West Coast again. Just like the United States government ruled that the need to protect its citizens was more important than protecting certain liberties, the court in Salem in 1692 also convicted suspected witches based on the mere possibility that they may be dangerous, even though there had been no proof that would be considered tangible or logical in modern
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japanese Americans were suspected of spying on the US Government and selling information to Japan. This was enough reason for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the deportation and incarceration of over 110,000 Japanese Americans, using Executive Order 9066. This was not justified, and was not fair, to the Japanese Americans. 62% of the internees were United States citizens, and 99% of all Japanese Americans were not spies. Executive Order 9066 was an order signed and issued during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Throughout history, there were many conflicts between people all around the Americans such as people being accused of things which they have not committed. For example there are many similarities to what happened in Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible, and the Japanese Americans of the 1940's. In The Crucible it’s mainly focused on the accusations and witch hunts. For the Japanese Americans it focused on how they get incarcerated into different camps around America.
How does The Salem Witch Trials relate to The Japanese Internment? Did both events happen out of fear or was this meant to be? The Salem Witch Trials and The Japanese Internment were both out of fear, and they are very similar by the events that occurred. The Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692.
Japan ambushed Pearl Harbor with the intentions of obtaining world domination, vengeance on the United States, and to prevent becoming a third-class
In this paper, I will discuss the signing of Executive Order 9066, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, regarding the Japanese relocation and connecting back to the Pearl Harbor attack, thus, resulting in further negative opinions of both the first generation Japanese and the second generation of Japanese Americans. Event Description: Internment was brought about by a justifiable fear for the security of the nation. Japan had figured out how to pull off the assault on Pearl Harbor, which nobody had thought was conceivable. The possibility that they may assault the West Coast while the US military was still in shock was on everyone’s mind. Secondly, it was caused by racism.
Camps were located throughout the most harshest western states. This order was enacted to protect the Japanese Americans from harm by the hands of Americans. It was also ordered to prevent any type of espionage because it was believed the Japanese Americans may still have allegiance to their farmer homeland of Japan. Many Americans were worried that people of Japanese heritage, would become spies or saboteurs for Japan. The United States
“Japanese Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. In the event of a Japanese invasion of the American mainland, Japanese Americans were feared as a security risk.” (U.S. History 2). Everyone in society is panicking because they are still recovering from the bombing. People want to take action against Japan and do not want to take risk so they relocated most Japanese into camps.
Nearly anyone from the New England has heard of the famous Salem Witch Trials. A year of persecution, leading to the accusation of nearly 200 citizens of all ages. No one was safe; men, women, children, even pets stood trial and 20 were hung for the supposed crime of witchcraft (Blumberg). 1692 was a year of witch hunting. Most today blame the trials on hysteria, or perhaps a bad case of paranoia.
These guys felt the blunt force of discrimination during this time. Japanese-Americans were forced into one of ten permanent camps. This was the result of Executive Order 9066 and Pearl Harbor. These camps were given the name internment camps. The point of internment was to test the loyalty of the Japanese-Americans.
Due to the increasing fear of a Japanese attack on the West Coast, Lt. General John L. Dewitt recommended that all people of Japanese descent living in America be removed to the interior of the country. In the article “An American Tragedy: The Internment of Japanese-Americans During World War II” by Norman Y. Mineta, former US Secretary of Transportation, Dewitt backed up his suggestion with rumors that “ethnic Japanese on the West Coast were signaling Japanese ships out in the Pacific ocean” and they “had stockpiled numerous rounds of ammunition and weapons” (Mineta 161). In order to combat this threat in case of enemy invasion, the camps would detain the Japanese Americans so they cannot aid the enemy. The warped logic used to imprison 110,000 people purely based on ethnic background was convincing enough to the American people that they didn’t even question
The Salem Witch Trials can be compared to many historical events around the world. The Holocaust is one of the most compared events to the Salem Witch Trials. These events are brought together by the facts that both of them were tragic and people died horrifically. Neither of these events were handled in a way that was beneficial for their economies. The Holocaust is a modern day “Witch Hunt” that relates to the Salem Witch Trials due to instinctual prejudice and mass hysteria, but differs in religion and the scale of the executions.
The accusers used the trials to settle situations such as the death of a loved one by blaming it on witchcraft. It was not quite like that in the Japanese Internment experience. The accuser now was the government not little girls. And there was a document that the government used to do this. This document gave the Secretary of the U.S. the power to exclude any people, citizen or alien, from certain areas in order to provide security for the U.S.
People were so full of fear that they would do anything to eliminate their anxiety. The McCarthy hearings of the 1950s reenacted the hysteria of the Salem witch trials of 1692 by spreading mass fear of prosecution, creating false accusations, and blacklisting people. The Salem witch trials were considered to be America 's most notorious episode of witchcraft hysteria. Many innocent people were killed as a result of false accusations, and many other women were put through trials to determine if they were witches.
The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been instigated by religious, social, geographic and even biological factors. During these trials, 134 people were condemned as witches and 19 were hanged. These statistics also include 5 more deaths that occurred prior to their execution date. It is interesting to look into the causes of this stain on American History, when as shown in document B, eight citizens were hanged in only one day.
December 7th of 1941 America would face a horrific scene in their own homeland, the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor with their Air Force not once but twice. That same day President John F. Kennedy would decide to place the Japanese Americans, living in the country at the time, in internment camps. The civilians would not have a clue what they would be put up against, now they would have to encounter various obstacles to make sure they would be able to survive. “The camps were prisons, with armed soldiers around the perimeters, barbed wire. and controls over every aspect of life”(Chang).