Mara I.

Blanco March 17,2014

P-C English


Title: The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II


The Japanese people lived in Japan and migrated to the United
States in the 1800s. The Japanese came to America to make a better
life for themselves and their families even do they had to face
hardship, they never gave up their hopes and dreams of a better life.
They started settling in the rural area of the Columbia Basin River.
The perseverance of the Japanese was a main factor on behalf of
their savior. They came to the US in search of better opportunities
and prosperity. The Japanese were more ambitious than the Chinese
people that already lived in the United States at that time.


The Japanese people were targeted for persecution because
when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese
Americans were caught in the middle. Anti-Japanese sentiment was
plastered all over the daily newspapers, radio broadcasts, and
magazines. Some neighbors and co-workers eyed them suspiciously.
Racial stereotypes and propaganda pieces that were prevalent before
and during the war depicted the Japanese as less than human and
barbaric nature. Many Japanese Americans helped in the aided war
effort by making uniforms and parachutes to prove their loyalty to
the United States. About 33,000 served in the military as Nisei
soldiers. The Japanese Americans just by their race alone were
suspected of collaboration with Imperial Japan and sabotage against
the United States of America. The spate of rumors following the Pearl
Harbor attack dramatized the public hunger for military information.
Anxiety derived from alarm over enemy activity within the United
States. The racial tension in the United States became an
unwelcoming place for Japanese Americans families.


President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Executive Order
9066 on February 19, 1942. He also ordered the internment of
110,000 Japanese Americans for the duration of World War II. At this
time of the order the nation was still worried that there could be
another attack imminently. This order drastically changed the lives of
more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S.A. This
order was designed to allow the military to force Japanese Americans
to leave their homes for the duration of war. Japanese Americans
were put in internment camps because of racial prejudice and
hysteria. They were under military confinement and surrounded by
barbed wire and armed guards on all sides. The internment camps
had a school, medical care, and newspapers. They were feed three
times a day. They lived in barracks. The internment camps were
open until 1946. The United States government made the mistake of
stripping the civil liberties of Japanese citizens.


Most Americans questioned why did the US government went
beyond its wartime powers without having truthful evidence to make
this large number of Japanese Americans go to the internment
camps. After the war Japanese tried to start over what they once
had. They all lost their jobs, homes, dignity, and pride. In 1976,
President Gerard Ford officially ended Executive Order 9066. In 1980,
President Jimmy Carter began a committee to investigate the
Japanese American internment. The committee realized that the
Japanese Americans did not place a threat on national security at the
time the war was happening. It was all a matter of racism and the
mass hysteria that was happening at that time and that the
government gave an excuse to put the Japanese Americans in
internment camps as a matter of supposed justice for American
citizens. It was also the failure of political leadership in the US
government. After all of this investigation the Congress issued an
official apology and $20,000 dollars for each person that survived the
hard situation that they had to endure in does internment camps.


A woman named Yoshiko Imamoto had live in America for
twenty-four years. She was a teacher. In March 13, 1942 they three
FBI agents took her to jail while they checked for a few things. She
was herded into a prison like camp. The Congress redressed the bill
in 1988 that is known as the Civil Liberties Act. The Civil Liberties Act
was signed by President Ronald Reagan on August 10,1988. Then
two years later the Congress funded the payments. In 1990, Yoshiko
Imamoto was 93 years old and got an envelope containing a check
for 20,000 dollars and an apology signed by President George Bush.
It took almost fifty years and the actions of four presidents to redress
their errors, realize their wrong doings and finally after all those
years give a proper apology to all the Japanese Americans that had
to suffer the consequences of the decision that the United States
made them complete for no justifiable reason at the time of the
hysteria.

I believe that the action that the United States took on the Japanese
Americans was abusive because they deprived them out of their
rights and liberty. The Japanese Americans had nothing to do with
the bombing on Pearl Harbor; they were extremely loyal to this
country because of the job opportunities that they had obtained.
Even do, the US government didnt treat them right, the Japanese
still appreciated being able to live in this country that allowed doing
so little at that time. The United States had no reason what so ever
to act in this manner toward this innocent people. They took racism
based on a security reason because of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Bibliography:

Books:
Yoshiko Uchida (1993). Elements of Literature,The Bracelet. New
York: Book

Internet sources:
The History of Japanese Immigration to the United States-
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sford/alternatv/s05/articles/laura_history.h
tml
Japanese Americans in the Columbia River Basin-
http://archive.vancouver.wsu.edu/crbeha/ja/ja.htm

Japanese American Internment During World War II-
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/i
nternment/pdf/teacher_guide.pdf

Living Conditions of Japanese American Internment Camps-
http://la8period3.pbworks.com/w/page/25942447/Living%20Conditio
ns%20of%20Japanese%20American%20Internment%20Camps