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JAPANESE INTERNMENT IN WWII.   Term Paper ID:23286 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Background, sociopolitical conditions & moral & legal argument against putting Japanese in camps in U.S. as threat to security.... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 4 sources, 10 Citations, APA Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Background, sociopolitical conditions & moral & legal argument against putting Japanese in camps in U.S. as threat to security. Paper Introduction: During World War II, the United States interned Japanese residents of the Western states in internment camps such as that at Manzanar in California. The reason was indicated in Executive Order 9066, signed in 1942 by President Roosevelt to give authority to the War Department to define military areas in the western states and to exclude anyone who might be seen as threatening the war effort (Houston and Houston xi-xii). Japanese living in the Western states were seen as potential subversives and were summarily removed to camps to prevent this. The camps operated until after the surrender of Japan, though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled at the end of 1944 that loyal citizens could not be held in detention camps against their will (Houston and Houston, 1973, xii). The United States was wrong to place any Japanese who had not committed any offense into these Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The final reason why the United States was wrong about the internmentwas that the action was counter to every principle on which the Americansystem was based. The civil court system was in full operation throughout the war, and anyone charged with espionage or sabotage could have been properly tried. The people imprisoned in these campslost their livelihood, their goods, and a period of their lives withoutcompensation until far too long after the event. While they could own land,they were subject to a variety of discrimination, as were their parents(Thomas and Nishimoto, 1969, 1-2). Executive Order 9 66 set in motion a series of events. The law thus reduced the total number of immigrantseach year to 15 , . Most were ineligible for American citizenship, andin many states they were forbidden from owning land. Many were fired from their jobs or evictedfrom their residences. In time, staying there seemed far simpler than moving once again to another, unknown place. It was argued that the Japanese were suspicious because oftheir supposed loyalty to the emperor, but this was a racist interpretationbased on the fact that they were different and not because there was anyevidence of split loyalty. The entire action was irrational. In 1913, California passedthe Alien land law which prohibited aliens from buying land or from leasingit for more than three years. The Japanese were highly successful in agriculture, and the whitecommunity viewed this as fierce competition. Supreme Court ruled atthe end of 1944 that loyal citizens could not be held in detention campsagainst their will (Houston and Houston, 1973, xii). During World War II, the United States interned Japanese residents ofthe Western states in internment camps such as that at Manzanar inCalifornia. Grocery stores and other firms refused to sell themgoods. After World War I, America faced hard timesso that the immigrant became the scapegoat for hard times. It was soon apparent that the classification of members of theJapanese minority on the basis of citizenship made no difference, andrestrictions placed in Issei were applied to the Nisei as well. Prejudice against the Asian-Americans on the coast was a fact of longstanding and predated the war, beginning indeed in the nineteenth centurywith the Chinese and then extending the same discrimination to the Japaneselater. It was as if the war were forgotten, our reason for being there forgotten (Houston and Houston, 1973, 72). At the time of the beginning of the war, there were some 127, persons having common ancestry with those who had launched the Pearl Harborattack. Houston (1973). The camps operateduntil after the surrender of Japan, though the U.S. They held American citizenship because they were bornon American soil, and most had been educated in American schools and hadbeen indoctrinated wit democratic principles. People who had been prevented from becomingcitizens were interned in part on the basis that they were not citizens,and their children who were citizens were also interned just as if theywere not and only because they were related to people who were notcitizens. References Hatamiya, L.T. was at war, and while this technicallyincluded Germans and Italians, it was applied only against the Nisei(Thomas and Nishimoto, 1969, 6-7). These restrictions would not berelaxed until after World War II (Lewis, 1993, 1/4). Thomas, D.S. The bill did not specifically name people ofJapanese descent, but it was designed to keep the Japanese out of thelandowning class. Germans and italians were not so treatedbecause while they had a different national background, they were of thesame race as most American citizens. A second reason why the United States was wrong was because itsrationale was based on race and not on a true assessment of the question ofwhether or not those being interned were security risks. Berkeley: Nolo Press. Other laws denied the Japanese citizenship, barred themfrom certain jobs, and prevented them from marrying Caucasians (Hatamiya,1993, 7-8). The object of the law was also to favor certainkinds of immigrants and to keep out others. Some 113, of these lived in the four states of California,Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, with 94, in California alone. One reason why the internment was so wrong was that it targeted agroup of people who were not citizens precisely because they had beenprevented in the past from becoming citizens, and so the internment was adouble form of discrimination. NewYork: Bantam. A tightnational-origins policy was instituted in 1921 as a temporary measure, andtotal immigration was limited to about 35 , per year, with immigrationfrom each country in a given year limited to 3 percent of all nationalsfrom the country who were living in the United States during the 191 census. Most of the early restrictions imposed on the Japanese minority afterthe start of the war applied only to the "enemy aliens" within the group,but this became a discriminatory excuse because almost all immigrants ofJapanese origin were, because of their ineligibility for citizenship,automatically classified as "enemy aliens." This was in sharp contrast tothe situation facing immigrants from the other two enemy nations, Italy andGermany, for a large proportion of these people had become naturalizedAmerican citizens and so were exempt from the enemy-alien classification.Presidential proclamations were issued immediately after Pearl Harbor andmade enemy aliens subject to apprehension and internment, restricted themin travel, prohibited them from possessing a large number of contrabanditems, and designated them for possible exclusion from military zones.Within hours the FBI began rounding up those suspected of subversiveactivities, based on lists previously compiled by various intelligenceagencies: Because of the manner in which the attack had been launched by the enemy at Pearl Harbor, and because of wild stories (later proved to be entirely unfounded) concerning a Japanese fifth column in Hawaii, Japanese nationals in the United States were apprehended and held on slighter evidence than were aliens of other enemy nationalities (Thomas and Nishimoto, 1969, 5). The action of interning American citizens and non-citizens when therewas no evidence that any offense had been committed by any of them wasshameful on its face, and while the hysteria of wartime might explain thislegal aberration, it does not excuse it. Yet the federal government proceeded with its plans for a mass evacuation and incarceration of American citizens and resident aliens, based solely on race, without any individual review (Hatamiya, 1993, 15). and R.S. His interrogator assumed over and over that he as loyal to theemperor and that he wanted Japan to win the war, though the father neversaid anything of the sort. The system was made permanent with the National Origins Act of1924, now based on the ethnic composition of the United States as reflectedin the 192 census, with entry limited to 2 percent of the number of peopleliving in the U.S. Farewell to Manzanar. She notes howlife in the camps developed its own pace and its own form of forgetfulness: As the months at Manzanar turned to years, it became a world unto itself, with its own logic and familiar ways. It wasbased instead on hysteria about some supposed attacks by Japanesesubmarines that probably never took place and that certainly were notorchestrated from the shore. LieutenantGeneral DeWitt was named the military commander of the Western DefenseCommand and placed in charge of executing Executive Order 9 66, and heissued a Public Proclamation naming the western halves of California,Oregon, and Washington, and the southern portion of Arizona as militaryareas from which certain persons or classes of persons might be excluded.President Roosevelt then signed Executive Order 91 2, which established theWar Relocation Authority to help those people evacuated under ExecutiveOrder 9 66, meaning to assure an orderly evacuation of designated personsfrom the restricted military areas. After all, noGermans were rounded up and placed in internment camps, though we werefighting their relatives as surely as we were fighting the Japanesepeople's relatives. Theywere a small minority representing less than one-tenth of one percent ofthe total American population and less than 2 percent of the population ofCalifornia. As noted, many were infact American citizens who had full rights that were being ignored, but inour system, even non-citizens have rights simply because they are humanbeings. Some 47, of these people had been born in Japan and wereknown as Issei, or first-generation immigrants, and 98 percent had come toAmerica prior to the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924, with almost halfarriving before 191 . The new agency was given widediscretion in deciding the fate of the Japanese Americans forced to leavetheir homes, and Congress passed Public Law 77-5 3 making it a crime toviolate a military order: During this time, although the West Coast was declared a theater of war, martial law was never declared and habeas corpus was not suspended. (1993). The internment was selective in that sense,as if all the Japanese on the West Coast were automatically in the thrallof the government of Japan. Righting a wrong. Our systemhas been designed to punish the guilty and protect the innocent, and inthis instance no real distinction was being made between the two. citizenship. The United States compounded its poor treatment of this particulargroup by assuming that it would commit sabotage when there was noevidence of this whatsoever. How to get a Green Card. There was a lack of due process of law that wasappalling. The effect of this injustice on its victims is evident in JeanneWakatsuki Houston's account of her own feelings once this era had ended: As I came to understand what Manzanar had meant, it gradually filled me with shame for being a person guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment. We assumed that these particular people would be loyalto the emperor, but we did not assume that all German people would be loyalto the government of Germany. Lewis, L.N. In California, the State Personnel Board voted unanimously to barfrom future civil service positions all descendants of nationals fromcountries with whom the U.S. Stanford, California:Stanford University Press. More immigrants were permittedfrom western Europe and fewer from southern and eastern Europe, and Asianswere totally excluded, primarily to prohibit Chinese, Japanese, andFilipinos from acquiring U.S. An account of one group affected by this order is to be found in thebook Farewell to Manzanar, co-written by a woman who was a child in thecamp, one of the American citizens born of non-citizen parents who weretaken to the camp along with the rest of their families. Roads werewatched, and many local officials arrested and detained Japanese no matterwhat their citizenship status. Another 8 , wereborn in America and were known as Nisei (second-generation) or Sansei(third generation). Berkeley:University of California Press.----------------------- 1 Nishimoto (1969). Houston, J.W. and J.D. The spoilage. Because he operated a boat, he was arrested forhelping submarines refuel, though there was no evidence there weresubmarines or that he had helped do anything but his normal job forfishermen. The executive order that allowed the internments was laterfound to be illegal by the Supreme Court, and even then the system was notdismantled until the war was over. The reason was indicated in Executive Order 9 66, signed in1942 by President Roosevelt to give authority to the War Department todefine military areas in the western states and to exclude anyone who mightbe seen as threatening the war effort (Houston and Houston xi-xii).Japanese living in the Western states were seen as potential subversivesand were summarily removed to camps to prevent this. In order to please my accusers, I tried, for the first few years after our release, to become someone acceptable (Houston and Houston, 1973, 133).The person trying to become acceptable was a teenage girl who was clearlyinnocent of any wrongdoing at all, and yet her childhood was taken from herand she was left feeling vaguely guilty without knowing why. It was argued that we were onlyprotecting ourselves, but it was never clear from what we were seeking thisprotection. What happened to Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston'sfather is an example. The United States waswrong to place any Japanese who had not committed any offense into thesecamps whether they were citizens or not, a fact later admitted by the U.S.,which also eventually tried to pay some reparations to those who had beenso incarcerated. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.