Preview

Japanese-American Internment Camps

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1153 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Japanese-American Internment Camps
Japanese-American Internment Camps

A historical fact that is not really talked about is the fact that, during World War II, over 100,000 Japanese-American people, the vast majority of which were actually American citizens, were rounded up and shipped to internment camps. These consisted of poorly constructed barracks surrounded by barbed wire, sentry posts and armed guards.
It all began when Franklin D. Roosevelt gave this war message to Congress on December 8th, 1941; “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941- a date which will live in infamy- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, rumors spread, fueled by race prejudice, of a plot among Japanese-Americans to sabotage the war effort. So anyone who looked Japanese were put into these camps, not because they had done anything wrong, but because either they or their parents or ancestors were from Japan and, as such, they were deemed a "threat" to national security. They were easily identifiable due to their race.
All of these people were forced to leave their businesses, their homes and, in many cases, their families as some individuals were taken elsewhere and held for years. The Japanese-Americans suffered severe economic losses, personal humiliation and, sometimes, death, due to this relocation.
The internment camps were overcrowded and the Japanese people were provided with poor living conditions. They were housed in tarpaper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without any kind of plumbing or cooking resources. Coal was hard to come by, and people slept under as many blankets as they were given. Food was limited and cost 48 cents per person, and served by fellow “campers” in a mess hall of 250-300 people.
Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the Nisei, or American-born, Japanese. The older generation, or the Issei, was forced to watch as the government promoted their

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Japanese Internment Camps

    • 1778 Words
    • 8 Pages

    To be the enemy, or not to be the enemy, that is the question. After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, many Americans believed that the Japanese Americans, also called Nikkei, were disloyal and associated with the enemy. There were rumors that they exchanged military information and had hidden connections. None of these claims were ever proven. The U.S. government became increasingly paranoid about this new problem 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 hasty enforcement of Executive Order 9066 in reaction to public hysteria, not only violated the rights of Japanese Americans, but also resulted in unnecessary effort and attention towards the internment camps.…

    • 1778 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Japanese American Internment

    • 4545 Words
    • 19 Pages

    The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941 drastically changed the lives for Japanese Americans living in the United States, specifically for those living on the West Coast. After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, some Americans became afraid and fearful of the Japanese. They worried that Japanese Americans already living in the United States might help Japan with future attacks or be saboteurs. The United States government slowly began to restrict the rights of Japanese Americans and eventually forced them to relocate from their homes and imprisoned them in internment camps between the years of 1942-1946.…

    • 4545 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, kicking off the fight for WWII. Yet while Military forces of Japan and the United States fought in the Pacific, there was a fight happening on the U.S. Pacific coast between American-Japanese citizens and aliens versus American citizens. Over one hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry were confined to internment camps, of these approximately two-thirds were U.S. Citizens.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    WW2 Internment

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Most of those forced into the camps were American born; others were Japanese immigrants. However, all had already made a good themselves in America. Many were professionals such as lawyers, and doctors, and thousands of Japanese Americans even served in the U.S. army during WWII. Many photographs depict the difficulties that many Japanese American’s had adjusting to life in the camps. Entire families were given one room to live in. Showers and toilets were communal and often set in the middle of the camps offering no privacy for the internees. Internees could not bring personal belongings into the camps, so they often only had the clothes they were wearing. some of the internees were separated from their families, adult or child. For children who are the age of seventeen, were given an loyalty test, in which officials were to ask questions. Surprisingly the test only consisted of two questions, 1. 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.) 2. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    When Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942,1 thousands of Japanese-American families were relocated to internment camps in an attempt to suppress supposed espionage and sabotage attempts on the part of the Japanese government. Not only was this relocation based on false premises and shaky evidence, but it also violated the rights of Japanese-Americans through processes of institutional racism that were imposed following the events of Pearl Harbor. Targeting mostly Issei and Nisei citizens, first and second generation Japanese-Americans respectively,2 the policy of internment disrupted the lives of families, resulting in a loss of personal property, emotional distress, and a personal attack on an entire race of people based solely on their ancestry. In this essay I will attempt to explore the experiences of Japanese-Americans during the internment period and the ways in which these experiences negatively affected their lives. Using the book Prisoners Without Trial and primary sources from relocation camps and assembly centers, I will analyze the physical, emotional, and social effects of the unconstitutional imprisonment, and how these effects shaped and reflected the lives and actions of those within the camps. Japanese-American internment violated basic human rights through racial discrimination, and in the process, subjected citizens to poor living and food conditions, emotional hardship, and financial loss, resulting in a lower standard of living and social imbalance affecting the entire race for the duration of WWII and years to come.…

    • 1834 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Japanese Internment

    • 2218 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Ng, Wendy. Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Refernce Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.…

    • 2218 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Japanese Internment

    • 2962 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Document number BT2113102619, source citation for article "America At War: The Internment of Japanese Americans (1940s)." American Decades CD-ROM. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale.…

    • 2962 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    “California Aliens Face Changed Way; Great Areas of the State to Be Affected by Restrictions or Forced Removals Inland Camps Disputed Imperial County Asks No More Shipments of Japanese -- Pass System Studied.” New York Times, 5 Feb. 1942. New York Times, query.nytimes.com. This article from the New York Times contained original information on the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans and the land they were forced to relocate to. This was used in the documentary to display the American government’s initial reaction to the Attack on Pearl Harbor.…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    One final reason why Japanese internment camps were very unnecessary was because during world war 2, many japanese americans fought in the war for the United States. In the short text titled “The Japanese Internment was an Unnecessary and Racist Act” it states “In fact, more than 25,000 Japanese Americans served in armed forces during World War 2, and all Japanese American 442nd combat team inflicted more casualties, and received more decorations than any other comparable army unit.” This supports the claim that Japanese internment camps were unnecessary because if the Japanese Americans were so threatening and dangerous to the United States, then why would they be so highly decorated in the military, and why would they risk their lives to fight for their country. Not Japan, but the United…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Can you imagine being taken from your home, and not knowing when or if you’ll get to come back? Well, Japanese Americans didn’t have to imagine it, it was their reality. The great majority of these people didn’t do anything to deserve the fate they got. The Japanese-Americans were taken from their homes and put into internments camps all across the United States. After the Bombing of Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt decided to put all Japanese-Americans in Internment Camps because he didn’t trust any of them. In 1942 Japanese-Americans were wrongly taken from their homes because Americans considered them life-threatening.…

    • 815 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The internment of Japanese Americans was an immoral act based on prejudice and imagined threat rather than justice and law. The social, physical, and physiological consequences of living in overcrowded camps were lifelong. It took years for the Japanese Americans to re-establish themselves again as trustworthy US citizens. Today, the society cherishes and admires Japanese Americans for their healthy lifestyle, longevity, and intelligence.…

    • 63 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many of the people sent to camps were not treated as they should have, instead they were treated like animals. When the camps were being built, some people were even “held in temporary centers, such as stables at local racetracks” (U.S. History). The facts are that the situation was handled very poorly and even though the government did not have much time to act, things could have been handled better. Rather than being treated as humans the Japanese were treated as lesser beings. This was wrong on many levels and casted a dark shadow on the American Government. Once the actual camps were built, the qualities didn’t even improve much from the qualities in the…

    • 615 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Japanese Internment Camps

    • 414 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Uprooting entire communities and relocating them to isolated camps is a blatant mistreatment of the rights of American citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly states that once you become an American citizen, you stay an American citizen and are treated like one. The Japanese Americans being forced to live in camps were not being…

    • 414 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While some may argue that the Japanese in these internment camps were treated fairly, many returned to their houses after their captivity to find another (white) family living in them, and all of their belongings gone. But while the Japanese were in the camps, they were given enough food to live on, and lived in a quasi-communist environment, which is ironic considering the "anti-red" hatred and fear that was sweeping across the US. In the case of Manzanar, which is in the Sierra Nevada's, the interned were given one bunk in a large tar-paper barrack for each family, equal but small rations of food each week, and the able-bodied were given menial jobs that they were not paid for (i.e. building more barracks, although they had attended law school or had studied medicine.) (http://thesierraweb.com/lonepine/manzanar.html) But according to the aforementioned website, "The camp was surrounded by barbed wire." and "Guards with machine guns were posted at watchtowers, with orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape." These quotes were said by former California Congressman Norman Mineta, who was 10 years old when he was taken from his home in San Jose, California, and put onto a train headed to Manzanar. (http://thesierraweb.com/lonepine/manzanar.html)…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Japanese internment is the forcing of 110,000 to 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. People of Japanese ancestry were relocated after the Pearl Harbor attack. After World War II, the people were released from the internment camps with nowhere to go because all their belongings and properties were confiscated.…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays