Many Japanese-Americans, who were born in the U.S., paid taxes, and even bought war bonds, were treated like criminals during the relocation, "The Japanese-Americans suffered severe economic losses, personal humiliation and, in some cases, death, due to this relocation."
They were fingerprinted and arrested, forced to suffer humiliation, and not told an exact reason why for over forty-five years.
There had been extreme prejudice on the West Coast since as early as 1936.
Therefore, many Japanese-Americans felt as if though they were being placed in a position of second class citizenship. Many had their lives completely stolen from them, "These people were forced to abandon their businesses, their homes and, in many cases, their families as some individuals were taken elsewhere and held, again without trial, for years."
Thus, most individuals within the camps suffered serious economic losses on top of the personal abuses. Many homes were sold for a fraction of their worth based on the immediate need to leave. Small businesses and professional careers of individuals interned fell apart. According to personal accounts, "Not only did many suffer major losses during evacuation, but their economic circumstances deteriorated further while they were in camp."
To make matters worse, many of the economic effects of being relocated followed the interned Japanese-Americans for years after their experiences in the camps. According to both research and personal accounts, "The years of exclusion were frequently punctuated by financial troubles: trying to look after property without being on the scene when difficulties arose; lacking a source of income to meet tax, mortgage and insurance payments."
Unable to prove income for almost six years provided difficulties in terms of taxes, loans, and employment. Returning to their former homes was bitter sweet. Many were forced to give up their property, and so had little to return to. It was a crippling effect on many Japanese-Americans for years after their experiences within the internment camps had ended. In response to the unfair actions which had long-lasting negative ramifications, many within the U.S. began calling for reparations, or at least recognition of the actions as being wrong. And so "the United States, which rarely apologizes for anything, in 1988 apologized and offered payment to surviving internees."
This was an important move, for it showed that the U.S. government acknowledged it had acted wrongly based on the influence of the massive wartime hysteria that was rampant at the time.
Oddly enough, Hawaii which had the largest population of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens, was relatively unaffected by the massive relocations of Japanese-Americans on the mainland. Although the largest concentration of Japanese-Americans was found in Hawaii, there was not the same massive relocation as seen on the mainland United States; "What is extremely interesting is that the Nisei and Issei living in Hawaii were not subject to a mass evacuation even though they formed a third of the population in Hawaii and were a lot closer to Japan than the Japanese-Americans on the West Coast of the U.S."
There are several key reasons for this fact. First, the American government realized that it would not have been economically feasible on their part to relocate so many people from an isolated island into the interior of the country. This was simply too costly and impractical; "It would have been impossible to transport that many people to the mainland, and the Hawaiian economy would have collapsed without Japanese-American workers."
Such travel would have actually cost more American resources than a possibility of an attack. The second major reason for this was the U.S. government's resistance to completely uprooting such a massive portion of the Hawaiian population. Removing all Japanese-Americans would have meant debilitating the Hawaiian economy. It would have been a serious impact on the daily life and events within the state. Thus, only some of the Japanese-Americans living on the islands were actually removed from their homes and relocated. According to research, "An estimated 1,250 Japanese-Americans were detained in Hawaii during the war."
This is a mere fraction of the actual number of Japanese Americas living in Hawaii. Most of those relocated did not go into the mainland deserts, as those who lived on the mainland West Coast did. Instead, they were held in such camps as Sand Island.
At the end of the many years of forced isolation, Japanese-Americans were allowed to return back to their homes....
Japanese internment camps are a dark period of American history. The forced incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent was based solely on racism and a culture of fear. During World War II, Americans also counted Italians and Japanese as their archrivals but of these groups, it was only Japanese-Americans that were rounded up and placed into concentration camps. Just as African-American soldiers could not serve alongside their white counterparts,
internment camps for the Japanese that were set up and implemented by president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The writer explores the history leading up to the decision and the decision itself. There were six sources used to complete this paper. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the American public was outraged and stunned. American citizens had lived with a false sense of security for many years that the soil of the United
... further, that it would be only a question of time until the entire Pacific coast region would be controlled by the Japanese.' Yet Japan's ultimate aim was not limited to California or the Pacific Coast but was global domination achieved through a race war. 'It is the determined purpose of Japan,' the report stated, 'to amalgamate the entire colored races of the world against the Nordic or white race,
The advent of World War II saw and end of the period of economic turmoil and massive unemployment known as the Great Depression, and thus was a time of increased opportunity for many of the nation's citizens and immigrants, but the experiences of some groups during and following the war were far less positive than others. Some of this was due to the different histories that different immigrant groups
And what of the details of this imprisonment? Were the camps liveable? Did they provide basic community services, like public education, privacy for families, civic news communications? The original "evacuation" to the camps was traumatic in itself for many of the Japanese-Americans, who were given a week or less to gather belongings, settle any long-term obligations they might have in their communities, say goodbye to friends and loved ones, and
Executive Order Less than two months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, bringing the United States into World War II, the federal government made a decision to remove many Japanese (the majority of whom were Japanese-American citizens) from the west coast of the U.S., allegedly for security reasons. This paper reviews that decision and the ramifications from Executive Order 9066. The main justification for Executive Order 9066 was
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now