Why Is Japanese American Internment Justified

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

“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.

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.

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”,

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.

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.

Looking at the “alternatives” we see a variety of more simplified options. Looking at the options it seems strange that the choice of internment was made. The Law enforcement option was the Isai (Japanese immigrants to the United states) and Nisei (Japanese Americans born in the United States), secondly limit travel visas into or out of the United States, limit the geography the Isai and Nisei could go, and take away work from those who were acting questionably. Domestic exclusion zones were also put up for debate which would exclude Isai or Nisei from working on or near military bases, war manufacturing companies, and away from coast lines or boarders. Mass deportation was an option for non-citizens but due to the high expense it was not an economically feasible option at the time.

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.