Japanese-American Internment Camps During Wwi Essay Example
We think of Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of our greatest presidents. We see Roosevelt as the president that helped the American people regain faith in themselves, especially at the depth of the great Depression. They say he brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action after asserting this statement, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But no one looks back to notice Roosevelt to be the president who signed an executive order to condemn, and relocate all Japanese Americans living along the West Coast to internment camps. Roosevelt signed the Japanese Americans off to be personally humiliated and in some cases, to die. During this time of World War II the Japanese Americans were not protected when they were put into the internment camps, and they were left to fight against the racial discrimination that fell upon them that caused all their pain and suffering. By all means, Roosevelt was a great president, but his flaws and mistakes should always be pointed out too, along with his wonderful achievements and accomplishments. So in conclusion of Roosevelt, one of his biggest mistakes as president was issuing the Executive Order 9066 after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This act was based on ethnicity, which permitted the military to bypass the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense. So the U.S. government forced more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes, businesses, schools, and, in some cases, family members due to separation during the relocation process. The order included all peoples of Japanese ancestry. More than two thirds of them were U.S. citizens who were put into the internment camps and half of them were children. They were all detained up to four years, 1942-1945. This was one of the first acts in the U.S. that started to raise questions about the rights of American citizens as embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. To justify