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On February 19, 1942 an Executive Order was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This order is now remembered to be one of the biggest violations of civil justice in American history. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to leave their everyday lives and commute to internment camps in many different locations with extremely neglected conditions. Though most were United States citizens, those with Japanese heritage were forced to abandon their homes. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, suspicions arose in the United States and many were uncomfortable with the large Japanese American population. Many citizens believed they may be spies planning the next attack or gathering information for the Japanese government. …show more content…
All though these fallacies could not be proven, the Japanese American citizens were still uprooted out of their environment and relocated to internment camps. America is based on the idea of freedom for all and yet seven camps were built in the United States to control a certain race based on paranoid claims of the time. California played a big role in this devastation seeing as though the state held over half of the Japanese Americans in the two locations in Manzanar and Tulle Lake. “Liberty and justice for all…” The end of the Flag Salute says it all, but Japanese Americans in the years 1942 through 1945 did not see equal liberty and justice. Japanese Internment camps were built between 1942 and 1945 and held over 120,000 Japanese Americans. These camps were set up after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. America then entered World War 2 which produced a lot of prejudice and suspicion of the citizens with Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans were suspected of remaining faithful to their homeland, even though there was no concrete evidence and most statements were merely paranoid claims. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans left their homes, jobs, businesses and were forced into these camps. This occurred even though most of these Japanese were loyal United States citizens that were every bit as shocked as the rest of America when the attack on Pearl Harbor came. They were still looked down upon. Many Japanese Americans were frightened this attack on Pearl Harbor would lead white US citizens to despise them even more and possibly create an opening for opportunists to claim property previously owned by Japanese Amercians. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, influenced by ill advice and popular opinion, signed the order to send all those of Japanese ancestry to the camps. By sending these innocent citizens to internment camps, the government was violating their civil liberties. No government or leaders have the right to relocate a group of people based on their heritage, race, or ancestry. Japanese Americans from all over were assumed to be loyal to their home government by spying on American affairs or reporting classified information. These are all assumptions, none to be proven true or even investigated. The rights and liberties of all these Japanese Americans were taken based on a large amount of assumptions and war time paranoia. There is no evidence of disloyalty from the Japanese Americans suspected of it, however, after the camps were closed spies were found and one hundred percent of them were Caucasian. Although the environment of the Japanese Internment camps were not nearly as harsh or deadly as the Nazi death camps, the conditions were still very rough. The camps consisted of barracks and room cells rather than houses. The different location of camps decided the weather of each, and most of the time the weather was not ideal. “The camps represented a prison: no freedom, no privacy, no ‘America’”. A biography from a prisoner of the camp depicted the “prisonlike” aura of the camps (Okubo 2). The camps were also guarded by military force and perimeter of barb wire. The internment camps served food three times a day in large halls. The food was said to be dull, starchy, and in small proportions. “There is no milk for anyone over 5 years of age… No meat at all until the 12th day when very small portions were served… Anyone doing heavy or outdoor work states they are not getting nearly enough to eat and they are hungry all the time, this includes the doctors,” a citizen at Tanforan described the hardships of working hard with little to eat. The camps were reported to have medical care, school, newspapers, and on occasion entertainment. Japanese were allowed to bring few possessions from home, even though the camps were supposed to exemplify their own homes. According to historyonthenet.com, following the year the internment camps were first made and used, all interns over the age of seventeen years old were forced to take a loyalty test that consisted of two questions. “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” (Females were asked if they were willing to volunteer for the Army Nurse Corps or Women’s Army Corps.) “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack from foreign or domestic forces and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?” There were ten camps spread through isolated areas in California, Idaho, Arkansas, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Colorado.
The ten camps collected Japanese Americans from over thirty cities in the United states- fourteen cities in California alone. The two in California were located in Manzanar and Tule Lake. The two in Arkansas were located in Jerome and Rohwer. The two in Arizona were in Gila River and Poston. The camps in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah were in Amache, Heart Mountain, Minidoka, and Topaz, respectively. The internment camp in Amache (Granada), Colorado held the smallest population at 7,318, and the highest population was held by Tule Lake, California at 18,789. Gila River, Arizona had a peak population of 13,348. Heart Mountain, Wyoming had a peak population of 10,767. The rest of the internment camps varied through the years but most reached much over 10,000. The government hoped the interns in the camps would be sufficient with the food they could farm but unfortunately the soil was too hard to cultivate. Most of the camps were built in areas where settlement would have been harsh in even normal conditions. The weather went from extreme to extreme, either too hot or too …show more content…
cold. California hosted two of the internment camps but the seven states in American were not the only ones that had camps. The Manzanar internment camp was opened on March 21, 1942 with a peak population of over 10,000, then closed on November 21, 1945. The Tule Lake internment camp was opened May 27, 1942 with a peak population of over 18,000, then closed on March 20, 1946. The State Department in The United States commanded Latin America countries to send their Japanese citizens to internment camps in the United Sates. Some of the Latin American countries developed their own internment camps and others sent the Japanese right over. The West Coast evacuation claimed to be a “military necessity”. Colonel Karl Bendetsen said, “I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp." This quote shows the hysteria displayed my many Americans right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The colonel had no motive to display hostility toward these citizens other than the fact that they were of Japanese descent. During the stay at the internment camps, some Japanese Americans took their own lives due to despair and emotional stress and others’ lives were lost because of the rough conditions and inadequate medical care.
Manzanar was one of the two camps located in California and was said to have the worst conditions for the Japanese Americans. Manzanar was originally home to Native Americans that communed near the creeks in the area. The town was abandoned in 1929 after the water rights were purchased by Los Angeles. The construction on the camp consisted of long days and long weeks. The building of the camp was said to last at least six weeks. When the first interns arrived from Los Angeles the camp needed more construction. More volunteers helped build Manzanar and Japanese Americans started flooding in. As time went more and more Japanese Americans arrived to Manzanar. The interns that arrived there were predominantly from Los Angeles area, Bainbridge Island in Washington and Stockton in California. Today Manzanar continues as one of the best preserved camps and is a national historic site to remember the terrible times these citizens went
through. Public Proclamation number 21 granted Japanese Americans freedom from the internment camps. The Public Proclamation was made December 1944 and officially released the interns in January 1945. This horrible event caused much grief and even death in some cases. The internment camps betrayed the concept of Habeas Corpus. Although these camps were not as radical as the Nazi concentration camps, there were still innocent people that were quarantined for their crime of simply being of Japanese ancestry. Some saw the internment camps as a necessary measure due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was obviously a very negative event that produced no positive influences other than the large sums of money rewarded to the Japanese Americans that stayed in the United States, but no amount of money is worth the loss of their own freedom. California, the Golden State, did not shine very bright when it took part in the relocation of Japanese Americans, hopefully it’s learned a lesson and will not partake in any kind of diminishing of freedom again.
The novel, Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, tells her family’s true story of how they struggled to not only survive, but thrive in forced detention during World War II. She was seven years old when the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942. Her life dramatically changed when her and her family were taken from their home and sent to live at the Manzanar internment camp. Along with ten thousand other Japanese Americans, they had to adjust to their new life living behind barbed wire. Obviously, as a young child, Jeanne did not fully understand why they had to move, and she was not fully aware of the events happening outside the camp. However, in the beginning, every Japanese American had questions. They wondered why they had to leave. Now, as an adult, she recounts the three years she spent at Manzanar and shares how her family attempted to survive. The conflict of ethnicities affected Jeanne and her family’s life to a great extent.
Manzanar scarred many Japanese Americans and their families, especially Jeanne Wakatsuki even after she had left Manzanar. Not only did Manzanar ruin people when they were there but after being there their lives were changed forever. Throughout Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne’s thoughts on her identity change, before going to Manzanar she barely knew herself, at Manzanar she wanted to be accepted, and after leaving Jeanne wanted to be seen as normal or to otherwise be invisible.
Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American community in California 1919-1982 by Valerie J. Matsumoto presents a close and in-depth study of social and culture history of Cortez, a small agricultural settlement located in San Joaquin valley in California. Divided into six chapter, the book is based primarily on the oral interviews responses from eighty three members of Issei, Nisei, and Sansei generations. However, many information are also obtained from the local newspapers, community records, and World War II concentration camp publications.
Fear is the typical human emotion. Some people live their lives full of satisfaction, hope, happiness, but no one escapes the struggle of fear and fears torture. After the Pearl Harbor bombing, President Roosevelt declared war on Japan. He then signed the Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, and called for the removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans. The way people were treated in Japanese Internment Camps and in the Salem Witch Trials are similar because of the conditions they were put through, persecution of numerous innocent people, and outbreak of hysteria. The way people were treated in Japanese Internment Camps and in Salem Witch Trials are similar because of the conditions they were put through, persecution of numerous
During 1941, many Americans were on edge as they became increasingly more involved in WWII. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese decided to take matters to their own hands. They attacked the naval base Pearl Harbor and killed 68 Americans in order to prevent the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with their military. After this surprise attack, the Americans officially entered the war, which caused many people to become paranoid (Baughman). Many people feared the Japanese because they thought they were spies for Japan, and because of this the Executive Order 9066 was signed and issued by FDR which sent many Japanese Americans to live in internment camps (Roosevelt).
Army eventually decided to allow the prisoners to leave the camps if they joined the U.S. Army but only 1,200 took the option. The last Japanese internment camp in the United States was closed in 1945. President Roosevelt canceled the order in 1944, two years after signing it. It wasn't until 1968, almost 24 years after the camps had been closed that the U.S. government decided to make reparations to those who had lost property due to their imprisonment. In 1988 surviving prisoners were awarded $20,000. Only 60,000 out of the 127,000+ prisoners of the internment camps were still alive. As a sign of their negative feelings towards the USA, 5,766 prisoners renounced their American citizenship because they were sent to the internment camps. (1) (2) After that the Japanese were released and lived along with other
December 7, 1941 was a military accomplishment for Japan. Japanese Bomber planes had flown over the island of Hawaii and bombed the American naval base Pearl Harbor. After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, many Americans believed that the Japanese Americans, were disloyal and were sabotaging the United States Government. There were rumors that most Japanese Americans exchanged military information and had hidden connections with Japanese military. None of these claims were ever proven to be true but believed by many at the time. The United States Government became concerned about National Security and demanded action. On Thursday, February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066, which called for an evacuation of Japanese Americans on the west coast with the excuse of a “military necessity.” The government’s enforcement of Executive Order 9066 in reaction to the public resulted in the creation of internment camps.
The effects World War II had on internment camps. On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was also the beginning of the turning point in WWII as it pushed America into the war. In late 1941 and early 1942 rumors of Japanese-American citizens, plotting to take down the U.S. from the inside started to spread, this lead to the passing of the Executive Order 9066, which forced all of the
FYI (This is a biased written paper written if one were to defend Japanese Internment)
In 1942 Roosevelt signed the Executive order 9066 which forced all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast. They were forced out, no matter their loyalty or their citizenship. These Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps which were located in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. There were ten camps all-together and 120,000 people filled them (2009). The immigrants were deprived of their traditional respect when their children, who were American-born, were indorsed authority positions within the camps.
On December 7,1941 Japan raided the airbases across the islands of Pearl Harbour. The “sneak attack” targeted the United States Navy. It left 2400 army personnel dead and over a thousand Americans wounded. U.S. Navy termed it as “one of the great defining moments in history”1 President Roosevelt called it as “A Day of Infamy”. 2 As this attack shook the nation and the Japanese Americans became the immediate ‘focal point’. At that moment approximately 112,000 Persons of Japanese descent resided in coastal areas of Oregon, Washington and also in California and Arizona.3
The"residence camp" started around April 1943 to April 1945, it was composed of 4 sub camps.
The internment camps were permanent detention camps that held internees from March, 1942 until their closing in 1945 and 1946. Although the camps held captive people of many different origins, the majority of the prisoners were Japanese-Americans. There were ten different relocation centers located across the United States during the war. These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.
n 12,000 waited in prison camps and traveled during the winter of 1838-1839 forced there by 7000 U.S. Troops
Camp Manzanar stretched out over of a total of 6000 acres. Housing took up 500 acres, leaving the other 5,500 acres for military homes, sewage and the reservoir. Surrounded by barbed wire, there were 504 barracks that were divided into 34 blocks. Night and day, guards patrolled the area heavily. Leaving no privacy what so ever, forcing everyone to share showers, toilets and laundry rooms. Eight individuals shared one room and was given an oil stove, a light bulb, blankets, furniture and a mattress made of straw. Making it particularly harsh in times of bad weather. During the summer time temperatures rose to 110 degrees. In the winter, temperatures dipped below freezing. To make the most of the it, evacuees started The Boys and Girls Club.