Japanese-American Internment

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The Japanese American Internment refers to the exclusion and subsequent removal of approximately 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, officially described as "persons of Japanese

1 The Japanese American Internment refers to the exclusion and subsequent removal of approximately 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, officially described as "persons of Japanese ancestry," 62 percent of whom were United States citizens, from the west coast of the United States during World War II to hastily constructed housing facilities called War Relocation Camps in remote portions of the nation's interior. The U.S. government officially apologized for this action in the 1980s and paid reparations. Similar internments occurred across Canada as well. Jerome Relocation Camp ages/jerome.jpg A note about dissenting views Ever since this subject became a topic of historical inquiry, there have been individuals and organizations who have argued that the suspicions against ethnic Japanese which led to Executive Order 9066 (signed into law on February 19, 1942) were indeed justified and who seek to rebut some Japanese American accounts of hardship during the evacuation and in the camps. Members of the American Legion and some veterans who fought in the Pacific theater are the most vocal proponents of this viewpoint. Another defender of the policy is Filipino-American opinion columnist Michelle Malkin, who authored a 2004 book entitled In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror, although critics have characterized her book as being one-sided, poorly researched, and logically unsound. [1] ( Among academics, the broad historical consensus is that the camps were indeed a product of wartime hysteria and racism rather than arising from legitimate fears of sabotage. Moreover, many Japanese Americans consider the efforts to justify the wartime actions to be highly offensive, on a par with Holocaust denial among Jews. Terminology: Internment, relocation, or concentration camps? Most historical references describe the camps as internment camps, although others favor the name relocation camps. Others, more critical of this action, refer to them as detention camps or concentration camps. Those who believe relocation is a more appropriate term argue that (1) the official designation at the time was relocation center; (2) the camps were not, strictly speaking, prisons; and (3) an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 camp residents did eventually settle outside the exclusion area. Most historians use the now-standard term internment camp because it is perceived as relatively neutral. Whatever name is used, the perimeters of the camps were fenced, armed guards were posted, and all of the camps were in remote, desolate areas far from any population centers. There are documented instances of internees being shot for From Wikipedia.com 1

2 walking outside the fences. However, some camp administrations eventually allowed relatively free movement outside the marked boundaries of the camps. Nearly a quarter of the internees left the camps to live and work elsewhere in the United States, outside the exclusion zone. Eventually, some were authorized to return to their hometowns in the exclusion zone under supervision of a sponsoring white family or agency. One of the camps, Tule Lake, was in fact later turned into a prison camp, with watchtowers, fences, and guards. Tule Lake was reserved for those of Japanese descent who were specifically suspected of espionage, treason, or other such disloyalty, and their families, as well as individuals who were community leaders, such as teachers, priests, etc. Other families were held at Tule Lake because they requested to be "repatriated" to Japan. A number of pro-japan demonstrations were held there throughout the war. List of internment camps Manzanar War Relocation Center Tule Lake War Relocation Center Heart Mountain War Relocation Center Minidoka War Relocation Center Topaz War Relocation Center Poston War Relocation Center Gila River War Relocation Center Granada War Relocation Center Rohwer War Relocation Center Jerome War Relocation Center From Wikipedia.com 2

History Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, allowed military commanders to designate areas "which any or all persons may be excluded, and with such respect to

3 History Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, allowed military commanders to designate areas "which any or all persons may be excluded, and with such respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave...".. Eventually such areas would include both the East and West Coasts, and about 1/3 of the country, and were applied to all of those of Enemy Alien Ancestry (of which the Japanese were a minority). Over 112,000 residents of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program. Of those, approximately two-thirds were U.S. citizens by birth. The remaining one-third were non-citizens who were legally subject to internment under the Alien Enemies Act. (It is worth noting, however, that the laws of the time prohibited naturalization of immigrants from Asian countries, so legal residents not born in the U.S. could not obtain citizenship.) Internees of Japanese descent were first sent to one of 17 temporary "Civilian Assembly Centers," where most awaited shipment to more permanent relocation centers being constructed by the newly-formed War Relocation Authority (WRA). Some of those who did report to the civilian assembly centers were not sent to relocation centers, but were released upon condition that they remain outside the prohibited zone until the military orders were modified or lifted. Almost 120,000 Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens would eventually be removed from their homes in California, western Oregon and Washington, and southern Arizona as part of the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history. Most of these camps/residences, gardens, and stock areas were placed on Native American reservations, for which the Native Americans were not compensated, nor consulted about. The Native Americans consoled themselves that they might at least get the improvements made to the land, but at the end of the duration such buildings, and gardens were bulldozed or sold by the government instead. Under the National Student Council Relocation Program (supported primarily by the American Friends Service Committee), students of college age were permitted to leave the camps in order to attend institutions which were willing to accept students of Japanese ancestry. Although the program initially granted leave permits to only a very small number of students, this eventually grew to 2,263 students in December 31, Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not subject to the strict internment policy, despite the fact that they were closer to essential military facilities than most of the Japanese Americans in the western states. Given that about a third of the population of Hawaii was Japanese American, it is likely that wholesale detention of Japanese Americans in Hawaii would have crippled the local economy. There are some From Wikipedia.com 3

4 accounts of Japanese Americans from Hawaii being sent to internment camps on the mainland. While the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii was nowhere near as severe as the treatment of the prisoners on the mainland were, they did exist. The conditions however were much more favorable as the interned were given more time and warning in order to be sure to give or sell their property properly. Most of those interned were allowed to give their property to family members for safekeeping, unlike most of the other Japanese Americans. Not all Japanese Americans in Hawaii were spared, but there were not treated nearly as badly as those on the West Coast. A key supporter of the internment was California Attorney General Earl Warren. In later years, Warren viewed his early stance on the internment as one of his greatest mistakes. He wrote in his autobiography: I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken. In early 1944, the government began clearing individuals to return to the West Coast; on January 2, 1945, the exclusion order was rescinded entirely. The internees then began to leave the camps to rebuild their lives at home, although the relocation camps remained open for residents who weren't ready to make the move back. The fact that this occurred long before the Japanese surrender (see V-J day), while the war was arguably at its most vicious, weighs heavily against the claim that the relocation was an essential security measure. The last internment camp was not closed until August 1948, although all Japanese were cleared sometime in One of the WRA camps, Manzanar, was designated a National Historic Site in 1992 to "provide for the protection and interpretation of historic, cultural, and natural resources associated with the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II" (Public Law ). Compensation Most internees suffered significant property losses. Upon evacuation, the Japanese American internees were told that they could bring only as many articles of clothing, toiletries, and other personal effects as they could carry. The US government promised to find a place to store larger items (such as iceboxes and furniture) if boxed and labeled, but did not make any promises about the security of those items. In some cases, Japanese American farmers were able to find white families who were willing to tend their farms for the duration of their internment. In other cases, however, the Japanese American farmers had to sell their property in a matter of days, for pennies on the dollar. In these cases, the land speculators who bought the land made huge profits. In addition, California's Alien Land Act, which prohibited non-citizens from owning property in that state, contributed to Japanese American property losses. Because they were barred from owning land, many older Japanese American farmers were tenant farmers and therefore lost their rights to those farm lands. To compensate these losses, the US Congress, on July 2, 1948 passed the "American Japanese Claims Act", stated that all claims for war losses not presented within 18 From Wikipedia.com 4

5 months "shall be forever barred". Approximately $147 million in claims were submitted, 26,568 settlements to family groups totaling more than $38 million were disbursed. Beginning around the 1960s, a younger generation of Japanese Americans who felt energized by the Civil Rights movement began what is known as the "Redress Movement" -- an effort to obtain an official apology and reparations from the federal government for interning their parents and grandparents during the war. The movement's first success was in 1976, when President Gerald Ford proclaimed that the evacuation was "wrong". In 1980, under Jimmy Carter, a commission was established by Congress to study their matter. Some white opponents of the redress movement argued that the commission was ideologically biased because 40% of the commission staff was of Japanese descent. On February 24, 1983, the commission issued a report entitled Personal Justice Denied condemning the internment as unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity. These conclusions largely having become accepted, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which had been pushed through Congress by Representative Norman Mineta and Senator Alan K. Simpson (the two met while Mineta was interned at a camp in Wyoming), which provided redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2 billion dollars. The question of to whom reparations should be given, how much, and even whether monetary reparations were appropriate were subjects of sometimes contentious debate. People who believed the internment program was justified (as described above, primarily members of the American Legion and veterans of the Pacific theater) argued not only that monetary reparations were inappropriate, but that no apology was necessary. On September 27, 1992: PL (H.R. 4551) the Amendment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and an additional $400 million in benefits was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government. Conditions in the camps According to a 1943 War Relocation Authority report, internees were housed in "tar paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." Most camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks and were thus poorly equipped for cramped family living. For example, the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in northwestern Wyoming was a barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for food rations. Because most internees were evacuated from their West Coast homes on short notice and not told of their destination, many failed to pack appropriate clothing for Wyoming winters which often reached temperatures below zero Fahrenheit. From Wikipedia.com 5

6 Criticisms The internment is widely condemned today, often attacked as racist. People frequently cite it as a precedent for largescale violations of civil liberties, and a warning sign of what might happen again. However, others defend it as a harsh necessity in a bitter and desperate war. Some estimate that by the time the last relocation camps (except Tule Lake) closed on December 1, 1945, the Japanese Americans had lost homes and businesses estimated to be worth, in 1999 values, 4 to 5 billion dollars, and that deleterious effects on Japanese American individuals, their families, and their communities, went beyond monetary damages. Other camps Crystal City, Texas was an internment camp where together with Japanese, Germans, enemy aliens from Latin America, and other people were interned as well. During the war tens of thousands of Germans and Italians were also detained, most of whom were foreign nationals or otherwise seen as subversive. Japanese Canadians were interned by their government during World War II. Japanese people from various parts of Latin America were also interned in conjunction with the United States. See Japanese Canadian internment. Legal legacy A number of significant legal decisions arose out of Japanese American internment, relating to the powers of the government to detain citizens in wartime. Precedent Looking at issues today In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, polls have found a third or more of the US public willing to intern Arab Americans in the way in which Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. The United States has instituted Special Registration, requiring annual photographing, fingerprinting, and interviewing of all male aliens (except permanent residents of the US) from any of a group of twenty-five countries, most of them predominantly Muslim, as well as monitoring of their movements within the US and restrictions of their right to travel. Many people are concerned that Arabs or Muslims in the US could be subjected to internment in the future, given the significant public support for such a practice and the enactment of legislation similar to the Alien Registration Act of From Wikipedia.com 6

Japanese American Internment. Photo By:

Japanese American Internment. Photo By: Japanese American Internment Photo By: http://teachpol.tcnj.edu Introduction On December 7 th 1941, The Japanese raided pearl harbor. This brought the United States into the second World War. This also