After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans were fearful of further Japanese attacks on the West Coast and also of Japanese Americans. In response to this fear, President Roosevelt passed an executive order relocating all people of Japanese descent from the West Coast inland. Similar to the fear of the American people, the witch hunts in the novel The Crucible by Arthur Miller led people to believe that girls in the town were being bewitched. Mass hysteria caused multiple arrests for accusations and even death for the so called “witches”. The theme of fear in both the Crucible and the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII caused people to be easily persuaded with the use of pathos and logos.
Thesis statement: Though many speculate that the act of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) while not doing so on Europe (Germany and Italy) was racially motivated, racism played little to no role in these bombings. The United States of America and her allies were willing to end World War II at any cost, had the atomic bombs been available they would have been deployed in Europe.
World War II was an eventful time both overseas and on the homefront. Men in the army toiled away fighting battles in the Pacific and Europe, and the war effort was just as strong at home. Industry was booming. Resources were conserved. Everyone was involved. !The statement that “the Home Front during World War II provided many social groups in American society an opportunity for advancement that they would not have otherwise had” is somewhat valid since not all social groups received such opportunities.
Tolerance turned to distrust and irrational fear. The hundred year old tradition of anti-Asian sentiment on the West Coast resurfaced, more vicious than eve. (Houston, p. 15). Three years of wartime propaganda funded racist headlines, atrocity movies, hate slogans, and fright-mask posters turned Japanese faces into something despicable and grotesque. The American Legion and The Native Sons of the Golden West were racist organizations agitating against the West Coast Japanese for decades (Houston, p. 115). Years of isolation widened the spacious gap between the races. It gave birth to more racist organizations with specific purposes of preventing anyone of Japanese descent from returning to the west coast. They used the war as a way to foment hostile feelings in the major farming areas. From the imprint in Jeanne’s mind the word Hate was given by the Americans when signs showed ‘ Japs Go Back Where You Came From’ (Houston, p. 136). Once the war was over in Japan, none of the civilians attacked Louie.There was no hatred towards the, only fear when the war subsided. The three Ex Parte Endo cases had Japanese American citizens challenge the United States Supreme Court as it talked about the racial bias, civil rights, mandatory evacuations at racially selected group of citizens while German and Italian American descendants were not
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).
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.
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.
Today is February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066. Executive Order 9066 forces all Japanese-Americans regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to evacuate the west.
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
On December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base located near Pearl Harbor at Honolulu, Hawaii. After the bombing, Japanese Americans were sent off to internment camps due to President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision on releasing Executive Order 9066. Even though the U.S government’s decision was meant to benefit the country’s safety from more attacks by the Japanese, my strong belief is that Executive Order 9066 was not justifiable towards Americans.
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.
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.
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.
“It was December 7th 1941 Pearl Harbor was just bombed, and America doesn 't know what to do but declare war on Japan.” “Making them officially in WWII”. “America is afraid that there are Japanese spies planted all over America.” “The result was to dehumanize all Japanese Americans by putting them in special camps called Internment Camps.” “Basically America 's Concentration camps, but not as hash.”
All Asians are good at math, all blondes are dumb, all Muslims are terrorists - these are all common stereotypes. Without even realizing it, stereotypes have undeniably played an enormous role in individual lives. Minds seem to already set a certain image in them based on the people they encounter. People judge others by their skin tone, ethnicity, and physical appearance unconsciously, and this have been proven by many social experiments. Of course, though these stereotypes might be accurate at times, there are situations where they are completely defied. The famous author Agatha Christie recognized this pattern and applied the formulas to her novels. In Murder on the Orient Express, Christie created quite a stereotypical atmosphere -where every character is judged by their nationality, but defies those stereotypes planted on them. This theme leads to the thought of the relationship between stereotypes and racism. There is a