Japanese Americans Interned In American Prison Camps During World War Two

Japanese Americans Interned in American Prison Camps during World War Two

Anyone who has taken any sort of history course is most likely to have learned about World War Two and how the basic cause of this war was the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, which was a United States Water Naval Base on an island in Hawaii. "This day is a day which will live infamy" (Taylor 50), is the famous quote formally stated by President Roosevelt, while giving a public speech subsequent to the attack. For the United States of America the attack was a horrible and devastating event, many lives were lost that day. From this unpleasant incident the United States felt threatened and betrayed by which was once supposed to be a peaceful ally, Japan. Therefore soon after this act of hostility the United States declared war against Japan, which led to World War Two. Now before this had even begun, a significant number of Japanese immigrants had been migrating to America for years, and started to built there our own society and families. "A census the day before Pearl Harbor showed that about 125,000 persons were of Japanese birth or ancestry in the U.S, while another 150,000 lived in the territory of Hawaii."(Nishimoto 24) During this time Japanese Americans started what would become a successful adaptation to the American life. Japanese towns were not only residential areas, but commercial centers as well. These commercial centers were not only utilized by Japanese Americans, but fellow American citizens who lived around them. They began to live normal lives and their children were nurtured by American institutions. But soon after America engaged in the war, these Japanese Americans became American citizens with enemy faces. The thought of them having a background in which was related to the enemy at the time shattered the Japanese Americans status, economically, politically, and socially. The U.S simply destroyed any sort of success the Japanese Americans had made in the summer of 1942, by sweeping up the entire ethnic population of California, Western Washington, and Oregon. They were then transported to the first assembly centers of War Relocation Authority. Which from here this ethnic population was brought to concentration camps around the west coast. Our government had taken American citizens with Japanese descent and positioned them into concentration camps, so there was no chance of a major threat. Regardless from the fact that the act against Pearl Harbor was made by the government of Japan, a country in which these citizens left to come and gain freedom in the United States of America, freedom in which they are promised by our constitution. How is this logically and ethically the best answer in a situation such as this one?

Many American citizens formed a hostile attitude towards others of Japanese origin, especially right after Pearl Harbor. This hostility resulted in a relocation program that was even more repressive than those in charge had originally intended it to be. President Roosevelt triggered the basic decision to relocate the West Coast Japanese Americans on February 11, 1942. "In a brief telephone conversation with his Secretary of War, Henry M. Stimson, the commander in chief gave carte blanches to Stimson and his deputy, John J. McCloy, to do whatever they thought necessary. His only junction to Stimson was to be as reasonable as you can." (Taylor 112) A few days after the president said this, he signed an Executive Order giving the war department authority to relocate Japanese Americans, which is truly the day that should live in infamy as far as the Constitution is concerned. Congress, by trying to gain a comprehensive view of this situation, tried to generally reflect the American public's opinion more accurately than the other parts of the federal establishment. The congress in 1942-1943 was composed of highly political people who had strong opinions about a program as significant as the one designed to remove these Japanese Americans from the West Coast to "less sensitive areas."(Taylor 88) It is shown that there was a great deal of pressure on Congress to do something about the Japanese in the West Coast, and this pressure certainly would become a factor in the promulgation of the Executive Order. Through out this time many political figures brought to attention many different points as to why this relocation might turn into a consequential decision. One point made was by the WRA director, Dillon S. Myer, who pointed out that "If they did not handle this predicament in a way to get these people absorbed as best we can while the war is going on, we might have something similar to Indian reservations after the war, which will remain a problem for many years to come."(Taylor 89) He also felt as if a racial issue might occur and that's the last thing our country needed in a time of war. Myer also tried to warn the government by saying that the Japanese government had been trying to prove for some time that this is a racial war, Orientals versus whites. And this relocation program would just contribute to their theory. During this time period it was actually very rare for a person to encompass enough courage to speak up against the injustice, which is more often than not the reason why the relocation of the Japanese Americans continued to occur.

Life in these concentration camps was supposed to be labeled as "homogeneity", which means it should be the same as it would be if these Japanese citizens were living their normal lives in America. Well American citizens certainly did not have to dress uniformly in clothing given to them by the army which reflected army surplus, and/or live in housing that consisted of row after row of tar, paper barracks, so how were these two ways of living even close to being similar? In these concentration camps no person was at a higher level of authority than any other Japanese American, in fact they all seized powerless positions in society. They were forced to live in a closed classless system with few alternatives. However if there was one good thing about the situation at hand, it was that at these camps Japanese Americans received a good education, provided by the government, which inevitably would be a starting point to help their culture to succeed once again in