This investigation aims to assess the extent to which Japanese-American internment from 1942 to 1946 was a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which declares that, “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The question must be asked in order to examine the legality of the actions taken by the U.S. government in opposition to American citizens of Japanese extraction (Nisei) and their immigrant parents (Issei). To determine this, the scope of this investigation will concentrate on the reasons for internment and the conditions in which the Japanese people lived during 1942 and 1946, particularly in a camp called Manzanar. One method applied is to explore an oral history interview
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.
Japanese Internment Among all of the other countries, one had the courage to bomb the United States of America. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor because of the threat the Navy had on the U.S. After that, America feared another attack or even worse, an invasion from Japan in the West Coast. In order to prepare for an invasion America decided to relocate all of the Japanese-Americans, mainly in the West Coast because they were the most threat. Many people debated whether relocating was the right thing to do.
The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII was not justified. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans were scared of the Japanese Americans because they could sabotage the U.S. military. To try and solve the fear President Franklin D Roosevelt told the army in Executive order 9066 to relocate all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. They were relocated to detention centers in the desert. Many of them were in the detention centers for three years.
Whilst the Japanese were being sent to the camps, many people on the west coast were hanging racist signs in storefronts and neighborhoods giving the obvious notice that Japs were not welcome. This attitude of hatred is what caused the poor conditions of the internment camps on the west coast, carried out and justified by the idea that the white Americans were better than the Japanese Americans due to the suspicion of espionage. The Japanese Americans were thought of as spies therefor they were thrown into internment camps where the discriminatory attitude of western Americans brought upon their unjust treatment. The pressure of WWII caused the American government to make unecessary precautions in hopes of protecting a nation when they in fact they divided it.
I do not think that Roosevelt 's actions were justified in the internment of Japanese-American citizens, because there was very little evidence that the Japanese citizens were a threat to the rest of America. The Executive Order 9066 led to a lot of changes for Japanese-American citizens. The Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Roosevelt two weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and this authorized the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable." This affected the Japanese-American citizens because the military then defined the entire West Coast, which was home to the majority of Japanese-Americans, as a military area. This then led them to relocate to internment camps, built by the U.S military in scattered locations around the country. For the next two and a half years, many of these Japanese-American citizens endured poor living conditions are poor treatment by their military guards, along with the rest of the country.
The internment of Japanese-Americans was justified because there were Japanese suspects. Between ten internment camps in Arizona, California, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas, about 250-300 people in each camp were suspects under surveillance. Only around 50-60 people were actually considered dangerous. “It is easy to get on the suspect list, merely a speech in favor of Japan being sufficient to land one there” (Munson 2). Clearly, America was taking extreme precautions. If they would have let one of them leave, they could have rebelled. This is a main reason why Japanese suspects had to be taken away to keep the United States population safe. “It will be hard for them to get near anything to blow up if it is guarded” (Munson 2).
No innocent people like the Japanese Americans should have been punished or looked as bad people because of their ancestry. The bombing of Pearl Harbor caused the U.S. to fear the Japanese Americans, so they placed them in internment camps. Japanese Americans shouldn’t of been punished because most of them were born and raised on the West Coast. The condition of the camps were often not pleasant. Japanese Americans were viewed as alien and untrustworthy, and isolated from others. Life of a Japanese American was harsh and scary because you never knew what the mad people would do.
To start off, Americans weren’t affected by the Japanese Internment Camps as much as Germans, and those in surrounding countries, were by the Nazi Concentration Camps. As said in the American Propaganda Video, Japanese-Americans were, “...potentially dangerous…” and that the relocation of them was, “...with real consideration for the people involved.” Most Americans didn’t know the truth about the Japanese Internment Camps so they were, if anything, comfortable with the decision. However, this wasn’t the case with the Nazi Concentration Camps. Germans who didn’t remain loyal to Hitler were sent to a Concentration Camp, leaving thousands of Germans living in fear.
Abstract Imagine not being able to walk outside at night or having to sell your possessions and abandon your home to spend years behind barbed wire—even though you’d done nothing wrong. For Japanese Americans during World War II, this scenario was reality. The freedom they once had is now gone, as they are put into concentration camps no longer in their home. Now having to line up for meals and to do laundry, thing you did before on a normal basis, while being hovered over. The internment of Japanese Americans in the U.S. was the act of forcing those of Japanese decent to relocation and incarcerating them during World War II.
I, personally, agree with those who say that the internment of Japanese-American citizens was unnecessary and immoral. It’s never okay to force citizens to abandon all their land, jobs, belongings (etc.) and make them live in an internment camp based solely on their racial background, religion, etc. It’s a violation of their civil liberties and first amendment rights. And above all stated in the previous sentence, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940’s was just unethical and
The following events caused the tensions to raise between Japan and The United States of America which led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Internment of Japanese Americans. They are the Rape of Nanking and the sudden stop of U.S exports to Japan. In the 1930s Japan, had become very nationalistic, militaristic, and desired for more land to expand the population. So, Japan went to China and conquered Manchuria, Northern China, then most of China, and eventually Southeast Asia. This help Japan get out of its economic crisis but soon a very tragic and horrendous even took place. The Rape of Nanking was a total massacre of the Chinese because at the time it was a glorified city that stood testament to China’s wealth and beauty. Within a
As a kid, I’ve heard about Japanese internment and it captivated me. My grandma would tell me how life was like in the internment camp. My fascination with Japanese internment lead me to choose it for National History Day. I wanted to learn more about this important mark in US History. My grandparents, Tom Inouye and Jane Hideko Inouye were put through this so I decided what better way to learn about it while presenting it as a project.
One reason why the U.S government’s decision was not justifiable is because many of the Japanese-Americans were innocent people who legally received their American citizenship. For example, in Monica Sone’s “Camp Harmony”,
Japanese Internment Camps- Rough Draft A nice day, Feb 20, 1942 then out of nowhere 20,000 Japanese Americans kicked out of there homes into horror camps, Internment Camps. At the time Japanese Internment camps where a good idea.