Question: How was the relocation of the Japanese to interment camps a racial and dehumanizing act?
Thesis: Despite the fact that the U.S. troops were fighting against the Nazi’s in Europe to liberate the Jews from concentration camps, the U.S. Government committed a hypocritical act by issuing an executive order that allowed for racial discrimination and the dehumanization of the Japanese by forcing them out of their own homes and placing them into internment camps.
In 1942, the people of Japanese descent that resided on the pacific coast of the United States of America were relocated and put into internment camps. The reason for their relocation was due to the attack of Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December, 1941 by the Japanese forces. After the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066, which forcibly called for the relocation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans [1].
What the U.S. government did was a hypocritical move. They were fighting to liberate the Jews from the concentration camps, yet failed to see that what they did to the Japanese was the same thing the Nazi’s did to the Jews by relocating them to camps. The living conditions in the camps were poor. They were given army surplus left overs and lived in terrible barrack-like conditions [2]. But, they were not treated as horrid and as extreme as how the Nazis treated the jews but the U.S. still saw them as a threat.
The Japanese people felt humiliated; they felt like animals that were being herded into one huge cage. Mary Tsukamoto once said after the visual experience of seeing them behind fences “We saw all these people behind the fence, looking out, hanging onto the wire, and looking out because they were anxious to know who was coming in. But I will never forget the shocking feeling that human beings were behind this fence like animals [crying]. And we were going to also lose our freedom and walk inside of that gate and find ourselves…cooped up there…when the gates were shut, we knew that we had lost something that was very precious; that we were no longer free ” [3]. The American culture praises freedom and all were promised freedom in a land that heavily promotes it yet the Japanese found themselves behind fences and entrapped. To be summed up by Rostow, “All in all, the internment of the West Coast Japanese is the worst blow our liberties have sustained in many years. Over one hundred thousand men, women and children have been imprisoned, some seventy thousand of them citizens of the United States, without indictment or the proffer of charges, pending inquiry into their “loyalty.” The relocation and incarceration was a very unfair and deceiving move on the U.S. governments part.
The relocation was not a smooth ride for the Japanese. Some were resistant and refused to leave and were then convicted because the relocation was an obligatory act. After their release, many had a hard time readjusting to their old way of living. In the well known case of Korematsu v. United States, Korematsu, a Japanese-American citizen, refused to leave his property and was convicted in violation of the March 21, 1942 Act, which is the act of Japanese exclusion from the coastal areas [4]. Some Japanese families lost their homes, their money, their businesses, etc. and after their release, it was a struggle to go back to their way of living. Congress apologized on behalf of the U.S. government in 1988. The U.S. government then proceeded to send $1.6 billion to the Japanese that were relocation as an apology and reparation.
In Conclusion, the U.S. government was in the wrong to bring a discriminatory and dehumanizing act upon the Japanese citizens; it was an unjustifiable and hypocritical move. It was an act based on paranoia of disloyal acts and they failed to see how morally wrong it was to do such thing.
Footnotes:
[1] “Interned During World War II, Japanese Americans Struggled to Recover After War.” At Your Library, 4/4/2015, http://atyourlibrary.org/culture/interned-during-world-war-ii-japanese-americans-struggled-recover-after-war.
[2] ”Weenie Royale: Food and the Japanese Internment.” NPR, 3/28/2015, http://www.npr.org/2007/12/20/17335538/weenie-royale-food-and-the-japanese-internment.
[3] "Japanese-American Internment." US History, 4/4/2015. http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp.
[4] Eugene Rostow, "The Japanese American Cases—A Disaster." The Yale Law Journal, 3/28/2015, http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3172&context=fss_papers.
[1] “Interned During World War II, Japanese Americans Struggled to Recover After War.” At Your Library, 4/4/2015, http://atyourlibrary.org/culture/interned-during-world-war-ii-japanese-americans-struggled-recover-after-war.
[2] ”Weenie Royale: Food and the Japanese Internment.” NPR, 3/28/2015, http://www.npr.org/2007/12/20/17335538/weenie-royale-food-and-the-japanese-internment.
[3] "Japanese-American Internment." US History, 4/4/2015. http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp.
[4] Eugene Rostow, "The Japanese American Cases—A Disaster." The Yale Law Journal, 3/28/2015, http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3172&context=fss_papers.
Bibliography
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Konkoly, Toni. "Law, Power & Personality." PBS. December 1, 2006. Accessed March 28, 2015. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_korematsu.html.
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"Weenie Royale: Food and the Japanese Internment." NPR. Accessed March 28, 2015. http:// www.npr.org/2007/12/20/17335538/weenie-royale-food-and-the-japanese-internment.
"Interned During World War II, Japanese Americans Struggled to Recover After War." Interned During World War II, Japanese Americans Struggled to Recover After War. Accessed April 4, 2015. http://atyourlibrary.org/culture/interned-during-world-war-ii-japanese- americans-struggled-recover-after-war.
"Japanese-American Internment." Ushistory.org. Accessed April 4, 2015. http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp.
Konkoly, Toni. "Law, Power & Personality." PBS. December 1, 2006. Accessed March 28, 2015. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_korematsu.html.
"Our Story: American History Stories and Activities You Can Do Together." OurStory: Activities: Life in a WWII Japanese-American Internment Camp : More Information. Accessed April 10, 2015. http://amhistory.si.edu/ourstory/activities/internment/ more.html.
Rostow, Eugene. "The Japanese American Cases—A Disaster." The Yale Law Journal 54, no. 3 (1945): 490. Accessed March 28, 2015. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=3172&context=fss_papers.
"Weenie Royale: Food and the Japanese Internment." NPR. Accessed March 28, 2015. http:// www.npr.org/2007/12/20/17335538/weenie-royale-food-and-the-japanese-internment.