Court Case: One Bad Apples

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. Furthermore, the United States should do more to compensate the families of those impacted by internment because the recompense provided initially was minimal and should be considered an affront to the memory of the victims.

Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was divine is a novel that takes place right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the beginning of the novel, the Japanese American family consists of a mother with her two children. They are in a turning point of their lives. There are posters and signs indicating that anyone with japanese ancestry must evacuate. Immediately the family starts feeling the rejection of their neighbors and people around them. Just because of the way they look like. Shortly after that they forced into an internment camp where other people like them stayed. Allowing to only receive a few censored letters from the children’s father who was alleged to be a Japanese spy according to the US Government. Together they struggle to

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

Immigration in America is nothing new and it has had an impact on society for many years. People from all over come to America for a fresh start and to get away from any problems. You can’t really blame them for wanting to get away from where ever and wanting to start over. As George Takei talks about his experience as a Japanese-American and his view of the American Dream.

“Mary Tsukamoto once said ‘I knew it would leave a scar that would stay with me forever. At that moment my precious freedom was taken from me’” (Martin 54). The Betrayal. The attack on Pearl Harbor. Freedom being ripped away. Loyalty being questioned.

What if you were stripped of all your rights in the a blink of an eye? The Japanese-Canadians experienced the horrid and life changing events of internment camps which were targeted specifically towards them. All Canadians of Japanese heritage residing only on the West coast of British Columbia had their homes, farms, businesses and personal property sold and completely liquidated. This was all due to the government 's quick actions against the Japanese. These actions were fuelled by the events of Pearl Harbour during WW2. After the bombings occurred the Canadian government assumed that the Japanese living in Canada were loyal to Japan, which could can negatively affect Canada. If this event would have happened in the in the past 35 years it

Although the Japanese Americans were the ones being penalized for looking a certain way, it was the collective group of Japanese Americans that felt the shame of not being able to properly integrate. The trauma that they endured enabled them to desensitize themselves to the attacks of their fellow Americans and thrive in a community that did not trust them. The Japanese-American people managed the trials and tribulations of America through collective willpower that enabled them to flourish in a hostile

In the 1940’s there is no doubt that the United States of America was engulfed by mass anti-Japanese hysteria which inevitably bled over into America’s foreign policy. During this period Japanese people living in both Japan and the United States of America were seen as less that human. Japanese-Americans living on the west coast were savagely and unjustifiably uprooted from their daily lives. These Japanese-Americans were pulled from their jobs, schools, and home only to be pushed to

The Constitution limits power on Government through Checks and Balances. In a 1944 case between Korematsu and the United States during World War II, a presidential executive order gave the military authority to exclude citizens of Japanese descent from areas deemed critical to national defense and potentially vulnerable to espionage. Along with this they also arrested Japanese Americans and forced them into internment camps. Korematsu however, a US citizen from ancestry descent, refused to leave his home in San Leandro, California. Korematsu appealed, and in 1944 the case reached the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided over the question “Did the President and Congress go beyond their war powers by implementing exclusion and restricting the rights of Americans of Japanese descent?” The answer is yes, they did, and it presents just how much more power the President had

Concerns over the attacks were coming from a small portion of the populations and the ideology was these attacks were due to racial discrimination, creating uproars in the public due to the long fight against discrimination between the different ethnic groups. With this challenging dilemma arising many of the public views were not willing to accept the thoughts of racism in the country, due to the thoughts of racism being a subject to the public that was undesired. Because of these attacks many of the ethnic groups feared for relocation in to camps due to what had happened to the Japanese Americans due to the war, yet they still wanted protection from the government from these assaults. The outcome of these attacks was separation between the servicemen and civilians, where certain areas were not accessible to the sailors due to the attacks and the need to protect the public.

This was brought up in 1944 by the Korematsu v. United States case. This was a case between the United States Supreme Court and Fred Korematsu. Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was an American civil rights activist who objected to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. This case was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066. They found Korematsu guilty of the fact that he was giving President Roosevelt inaccurate information about the Japanese-American citizens. As a result of this case, The Supreme Court ruled that inaccurate and false information had led to the internment decision. The Court also ruled that Japanese-Americans had been subject to racial and economic prejudices during this

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. Even at the high levels of government, officials share similar prejudices. In this sense, there was very

In the case of Japanese Americans, they were able to receive some levels of equality among whites. In the article, “No Jap Crow’: Japanese Americans Encounter the World War II South”, author Jason Morgan Ward looks at how Japanese Americans were treated during the Second World War in the American South, and how they were allowed to be considered semi-white. In his thesis Ward said, “This episode revealed the increasing inability of southern white leaders to defend the segregated status quo, even as it exposed their segregated society to comparisons with fascism. At the same time, in trying to make Japanese Americans behave according to the Jim Crow script, white leaders foreshadowed the ways they would later react to the protests of the civil

Japanese internment camps made us question who was really an American and it relates to today’s issues. Internment camps were similar to concentration camps or prison and Japanese-Americans were put into them. Even though they were considered Americans, they were still treated unfairly by other Americans. So who is American? In my opinion, the Japanese were still trying to show that they were Americans. They were complying with people putting them into the internment camps and they burned all of their heritage. Honestly, they were not doing anything un-American, but, because of their race, they were targeted. Arresting someone based on race is not constitutional, but we still see it today. Latinos are being discriminated because people

This film showed a great example of categorizing when it came to trying to find the right people who signaled for Pearl Harbor. The way they went about it I do not believe was right. Nobody should just be accused or removed from somewhere due to what they look like or their ethnicity. This film also was very eye opening, seeing the amount of people to lose their jobs just because they may of been Japanese American which is terrible thinking about how many families suffered during that time when they lost property and even homes. There is a huge difference between having suspects and evidence that lead you up to who you are needing to find, but just taking anyone that looks like a Japanese American person is too excessive in my