Japanese Internment Camps During World War II

The Japanese Internment Camps were United States controlled concentration camps during WWII for the accused Japanese-Americans, urged on by the paranoia citizens and ended by the Nisei’s loyalty. The establishment began by the relocation order, also known as Executive Order 9066. All of the American citizens of Japanese descent were relocated in a short period of time and endured the conditions of the war camps. An intern based army on the Allied side and two major court cases made the US reconsidered the Executive Order and shut down the internment camps. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December, the citizens of America were terrified and blamed the Japanese-Americans. They believed anyone with Japanese ancestry worked as spies for the

The United States and Hirabayashi vs. The United States. Both court cases had defendants that proclaimed that the concentration camps had violated the 5th Amendment and the Constitution, but Congress voted in favor of the US’s side both times. During the internment camps, male interns were enlisted and formed an all-nisei army, also known as the 442nd Regiment Combat Army. They won many battles against Germany and Italy, further spurring on the US’s reason to shut down the war camps. The few that were concluded as loyal were allowed to leave the camp, work as migrant laborers in the West, and some were enlisted in the US Army to fight. In December 18, 1944, the government announced that all of the camps were planned to be shut down by the end of 1945, with the last concentration camp closed in March 1946. The Civil Liberties Act was passed in 1988, awarding 20,000 dollars to each of the 80,000 surviving interns, totaling up to 1.6 billion dollars in reparations. The Executive Order 9066 was officially repealed in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford as he offered an apology for the Japanese-American interns. The Japanese Internment Camps were a place for what the US deemed “an enemy of state”. It had dented the US’s history culturally accepting and stemmed from its long history of Asian immigrants. The internment camps were a result from the Executive Order 9066 issued by the pressured President, were endured by the interns with its poor conditions, and was shut down after further US investigation. This proves that the Japanese-Americans, who was accused of being saboteurs, in those hard times remained loyal to their country and got their well-deserved