Essay On Japanese Internment Camps

On December 7, 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 120,000 United States Japanese American citizens, also known as Nikkei, were incarcerated during World War II. There were rumors going around that the Japanese Americans had hidden connections and they were potential spies and saboteurs, and they believed that the were poisoning vegetables and committing sabotage by mining coastal harbors. Many of the people were paranoid and saw the Japanese as a threat and their intentions were to help their mother country win World War II. Although, these speculations were never proven and there was no direct implication of the Japanese spying. Subsequently, the U.S government felt very suspicious and declared that “military necessity” was the

How would American citizens feel if there was a false rumor and the government imprisoned them? According to Yancey, “One immigrant states ‘As they lived long in this country, they found out its a good place to live and their descendants have too much opportunity’” (14). Over 120,000 Japanese Americans, ⅔ of whom were citizens of the U.S, were interned in one of ten WRA camps, also known as the War Relocation Authority Camps. The constitution of the United States states that all men are created equal yet "most of them arrested were male immigrants who were put under surveillance for a year before the attack because they were leaders of the ethnic community- Japanese Association officials, Buddhist Priests, Japanese language teachers, and newspaper editors (Murray 121). The Japanese has the same equal rights as any other citizen, although they still didn’t trust them even though they were loyal citizens of the United States. Also in some states, Japanese couldn’t own land, be naturalized as citizens, or vote. The United States claims to be a free country with equal rights, however, they discriminated people by their