Japanese Americans To Internment Camps example essay topic

During World War II, the American government found it within their power to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps. This was a serious violation of the constitutional rights of these Japanese Americans. Nearly 120,000 people of Japanese descent were interned by the American government during this time. The internment consisted of a mass evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coast states. Japanese Americans were interned from all of California and from the western half of Oregon and Washington. This grave injustice was all done in the name of defense in an atmosphere of World War II hysteria.

"On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of Japanese Americans from sensitive military areas on the West Coast". 1 This order was created to ensure all possible protection against espionage and sabotage of national defense materials. Executive Order 9066 "gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona". 2 This order also gave the military powers to transport these people to assembly sites in California, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington State. This was a major event in the history of the United States.

At no other time in this nation's history was a major violation of constitutional rights, such as this, condoned by the highest authorities of this country. Especially since the great majority of these detained people were loyal to the United States. There were two types of Japanese that were interned during this event, the Issei and the Nisei. The Issei were immigrants from Japan and the Nisei were children of those immigrants.

However, the major difference between these two groups is that the Nisei were actually born in the United States and citizens of United States because they were born there. There were many cases brought before the Supreme Court questioning the Constitutionality of the internment of these people. All of the cases were from the Nisei people. "The basis on which the Court upheld the plan was military representations to the necessity for evacuation. These representations were undoubtedly exaggerated, and they were based in part on the view that not only the Issei but the Nisei were different from other residents of the west coast". 3 Fred Korematsu was a Japanese American that challenged the government's right to evict him from his home in San Leandro, California.

His case was argued in 1944 in front of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled against Korematsu and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black actually defended the internment of Japanese Americans against charges of racism. The government removed this man from his home and basically imprisoned him solely because of his ancestry. There was no evidence against this man showing that he had done anything wrong. This was a prejudice action taken by the government of the United States against an innocent civilian. Ten days after Pearl Harbor, General Walter Short, the army commander in Hawaii, and General Husband E. Kimmel, the navy commander in Hawaii, were both removed from their commands because of their failure to anticipate the surprise attack from the Japanese.

General DeWitt was the commander of the west coast military department, and he took all precautions to not make the same mistake as these men. The job of the military during this time was not to ensure the civil liberties of any individuals, but to protect vital areas on the west coast. The task of the military was to make sure that these areas were as secure as possible from espionage and sabotage. The United States traded their views on civil liberties for the benefits of national security. The national census of the United States, taken in 1940, showed that there was a total of 126,947 Japanese living in the United States. Out of these people 112,353 were living in the three Pacific States.

California alone had 93,717 Japanese living in its state. This was about three fourths of the entire Japanese population in the entire country. "Of the west coast Japanese, 40,869 were Issei that were ineligible for citizenship through naturalization proceedings, and 71,484 were Nisei and therefore American-born citizens". 4 This means that the United States removed 71,484 of its own citizens, with no proof of wrong doing, strictly because of there ancestry. Another question in my mind is why the United States decided to remove only the Japanese, and not people with ancestry from all of the Axis nations. In 1942 there were about 58,000 Italian and 22,000 German aliens living in the Pacific States.

These people were not removed from their homes and sent to internment camps. No one living in the United States of America should have had to go through what the Nisei and Issei went through. This is a country that is based on not persecuting people for there basic beliefs, race, or ethnicity. The fact is that the United States overreacted to the hysteria of the attack of Pearl Harbor and saw all Japanese as possible threats since it was Japan that led the attacks on Pearl Harbor. "Once the relocation plan was in place, it could only be challenged in courts... the decisions in these cases upheld a program that, at bottom, was based on racial discriminations.

There are several levels at which this criticism can be made. The broadest is that the Nisei were relocated simply because the Caucasian majority on the west coast (and the country as a whole) disliked them and wished to remove them as neighbors or as business competitors". 5 However, the Issei were not in the same position as the Nisei. The Issei were not citizens of the United States, and the Alien Act of 1798 was used against them.

This act authorizes the President to apprehend, restrain, or secure any one living in the United States and not actually naturalized that are over the age of fourteen and native to countries with declared war between the foreign country and the United States. The most frequent argument that the Issei gave the United States was that Japanese enemy aliens were treated different than aliens from Germany and Italy during this time. This is because the Germans and the Italians were coming to the United States for more years than the Japanese, and they moved all around the country. Germans were migrating to the United States as far back as British colonization. The Japanese had only been migrating to the United States in recent years, and they were mostly located in the Pacific states of the country. These injustices towards the Japanese can basically be described as racial prejudice.

There is no other explanation for the internment of these people. It's shocking though to see how the United States was so racially prejudice towards the Japanese because the United States has always stood for the freedom and civil liberties of all people. It's also ironic how the United States was fighting a war against Germany partly because of its Nazi concentration camps, while at the same time the United States had internment camps for the Japanese. In more recent years, the United States has apologized for the injustices that were performed then. The United States has even paid settlements of $20,000 to living Japanese survivors of their internment camps. However, they can never take back what they did, and the relocation and internment of people of Japanese descent was unjustified and uncalled for.

1. Bryan J. Grapes, Franklin D. Roosevelt (San Diego, California: Green haven Press, Inc., 2001) 2. Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation, March 16th, 2003 web 3. Japanese Relocation, March 16th, 2003 web 4. Houghton Mifflin, A People & A Nation: Sixth Edition Volume Two: Since 1865 (Boston, New York, 2001).