Strained Relationships Following Attacks on the United States - Research Paper Example

21 November Strained Relationships Following Attacks on the United s At the end of 1941, Japan attacked the United States. In response, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps. This response was the direct result of other Americans and the government fearing that Japanese Americans would aid the enemy and not the country they lived in. The Japanese Americans were imprisoned without due cause for almost four years while the United States waged war and eventually won against Japan. In 1988, the United States government issued an official apology for imprisoning so many innocent Japanese Americans. A similar reaction of racism towards a group of people can be seen from the events of September 11, 2001. Because the terrorists were from the Middle East, many Middle Eastern Americans have been singled out by other Americans and treated poorly. The attack by the Japanese on the American naval base Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, will forever be known as “a day that will live in infamy.” The decision by the Japanese to attack the United States on their own soil has often been referred to as “awakening a sleeping giant.” This attack prompted the United States to declare war with Japan. The Japanese-American relationship went from somewhat peaceful to in a state of war almost overnight. The only response the United States could have had was to declare war on Japan. The book Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford provides a fictional, personal account of the strained relationship between the Japanese and Americans at the beginning of World War II. In the book, a young Henry Lee becomes friends with a Japanese American girl named Keiko Okabe. He is from China but she was born in the United States. After the events of Pearl Harbor, the setting of the book in Seattle has grown anti-Japanese. Keiko and her family are sent to an internment camp because they are Japanese in origin. The fictional novel shows the widespread panic by Americans toward other Japanese Americans during this time period. After America declared war on Japan, Americans started to lose trust in their Japanese immigrant friends and neighbors. The solution was to force the Japanese immigrants into internment camps in order to prevent any spies from assisting Japan. This solution was the result of fear, misinformation, and overall ignorance from the American people and government. Two months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order that forced Japanese Americans to move to internment camps (Peterson 16). Between 1942 and 1945, an estimated 117,000 Japanese Americans lived in these camps. After an estimated 3,500 Americans died during Pearl Harbor, and America declared war immediately on Japan in response (Tunnell 1). In his book about Japanese internment camps, Tunnell explains the reaction by Americans to their friends and neighbors who happened to be Japanese: “Fiery patriotic propaganda against Japan filled newspapers and radio broadcasts, and many Americans were overcome by an irrational hatred of anything Japanese- including fellow Americans who wore Japanese faces (1).” America has many immigrants, and in 1941 there were many immigrants who had come to America from Japan. The problem was that they “looked like the enemy” (Tunnell 2). Racism towards Japanese Americans prior to the attacks on Pearl Harbor was not uncommon: In the Pacific States, they were not even allowed to own land or marry outside their race- in a country established by immigrants, no less! It was not uncommon to see billboards during the 1920’s, 1930’s, and early 1940’s on the West Coast that read ‘Japs, don’t let the sun shine on you here. Keep moving,’ or ‘Japs keep moving. This is a white man’s neighborhood. (Tunnell 3) Many Americans were unexplainably racist to Japanese immigrants prior to the events of Pearl Harbor. The term “Japs” was a derogatory term for the Japanese people. Then, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, these Americans who were already racist had reason to justify their racism to themselves. The ironic part about the reaction of non-Japanese Americans is that children of Japanese immigrants who were born on American soil were as outraged as any other American when Japan invaded Pearl Harbor (Tunnell 5). In the novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Keiko tells Henry Lee that even though she looks Japanese, she was born in America and is an American in her heart: Keiko halted and looked at Henry. She looked down at his button, the one his father made him wear. “You are Chinese, aren’t you Henry?” He nodded, not knowing how to answer. “That’s fine. Be who you are,” she said, turning away, a look of disappointment in her eyes. “But I’m an American.” (Ford 60) Keiko knows she is American and expresses sadness and confusion that other Americans were treating her the way they were. Keiko represents thousands of Japanese Americans. Keiko did not attack Pearl Harbor, Japan did. In the quoted passage, she tries to explain to Henry that she should be treated like every other American even though her ethnicity and facial features are Japanese. Further along in the story, Keiko and Henry have another conversation where she tells him more about her frustration: “I was born here. I don’t even speak Japanese. Still, all these people, everywhere I go… they hate me” (Ford 114). This fictional novel represents the feelings of thousands of Japanese Americans directly following the attack on Pearl Harbor. No matter what they said or did, other Americans continued to hate them. Even though the Japanese Americans were upset and frustrated towards the country where they originated, their frustration only increased when they were forced to move to internment camps. The hysterical racism from other Americans amplified in the months following December 7, 1941: “Newspapers fanned the fire by continuing to print shocking and unfounded stories about Japanese Americans and using the same term for the Nikkei as was being used for the enemy: ‘Japs’” (Tunnell 5). Japanese Americans were undoubtedly confused as to why they were so hated by their fellow Americans. In terms of explanation of the racist Americans actions, perhaps they needed an outlet with which to dispel their outrage over so many deaths at Pearl Harbor. Still, if this were the case, it is definitely not an excuse for their inappropriate actions. The United States government was concerned about the violent reactions of many American citizens toward Japanese Americans, and internment camps might have been the safest place for these Japanese Americans given the violent reactions they were encountering from other Americans. President Roosevelt himself stated that Japanese Americans should not be placed in internment camps because it was a violation of their Constitutional rights: In most of the cases… I am now talking about Japanese people from Japan who are citizens… Japanese Americans. I am not talking about the Japanese themselves. A good deal of progress has been made in scattering them throughout the country, and that is going on almost every day. I have forgotten what the figures are. There are about roughly a hundred- a hundred thousand Japanese-origin citizens in this country. And it is felt by a great many lawyers that under the Constitution they can’t be kept locked up in concentration camps. (Robinson 2) President Roosevelt felt conflicted about sending Japanese Americans to internment camps. In the end, he decided it needed to be done in order to protect them from violent Americans full of anger because of Pearl Harbor. “The special stain of the internment is that an unpopular group of American citizens was singled out on a racial basis and summarily dispossessed and incarcerated without charge” (Robinson 6). Even though over half of the estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans sent to internment camps were American citizens, they were sent anyway (Tateishi 8). Most Japanese Americans lived on the West coast. President Roosevelt conveyed the idea that it would be safer if the Japanese Americans were more scattered in order to dispel racism. The smaller the population density of the Japanese Americans in a particular area, the more they would stay under the radar. The goal initially had been to slowly disperse the Japanese Americans from the internment camps into various parts of the country (Robinson 5). However, intense hatred from other Americans continued to grow as the United States began to fight Japan and the Japanese Americans who had been forced to live in the internment camps lived in them for four years. In 1988, the United States government publicly acknowledged their mistake and issued reparations to all surviving family members of Japanese Americans who were forced into internment camps (Hatamiya 2). The internment camps were decided to be a “result of racism, wartime hysteria, and a failure of the nation’s leadership” (Hatamiya 1). This act ended a struggle for an apology that surviving Japanese Americans had undertaken with the United States for forty years. This apology included the United States making a pledge that it would never imprison any of its citizens based on race ever again. Since the end of World War II, Japan and the United States have become allies. It is not socially acceptable for modern Americans to refer to Japanese Americans as “Japs.” The United States defeated Japan by destroying two heavily populated cities in Japan. Since that time, Japan has rebuilt itself and its economy. Japanese people are able to immigrate to the United States without encountering racism. After fifty years, the racism towards Japanese Americans that was prevalent before World War II has finally dispelled. A modern parallel to the American reaction towards the Japanese Americans in World War II is to the events following 9/11. When terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, many Americans became wary of all Middle Eastern people. Because the terrorists originated in the Middle East, United States citizens started to equate any Middle Eastern person they saw with terrorism. Middle Eastern immigrants as well as their American-born children began to be ostracized by American society. Americans were afraid because of what happened on 9/11 and started to let their fear create stereotypes for an entire race of people. Poynting describes the attacks that occurred towards Middle-Easterners living in America: When the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the USA seemed likely to prompt another outbreak of incidents of women having their hijab torn at in public places, of people being spat upon or more violently assaulted, of incidents of arson, vandalism, threats and harassment, a number of instrumentalities and organisations began to keep logs or even to maintain telephone ‘hotlines’ to record and respond to these occurrences. Such records indicated a sharp increase in incidents of racial attack or vilification immediately after the airliner attacks in the United States in 2001, and an elevated level of such events for several months afterwards. (4) Middle Eastern Americans have been harassed, had their homes vandalized, and been verbally assaulted. Other Americans see their ethnicity and assume they have a connection with terrorism. The incidents of abuse towards Middle Easterners at this time parallel the way Americans began to fear Japanese Americans directly following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. It seems like when American is attacked, the American people channel their fear towards people who look like those who attacked them. Perhaps America is juvenile in its stereotypes of other races. Just because a person looks a certain way does not mean they fall into the same category as others who look exactly like them. Instead, this is the reaction many American citizens automatically have. It is a fact that 120,000 Japanese Americans were held in internment camps because they encountered racism from other American citizens. It is a fact that racism towards African Americans did not dispel until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s. It is a fact that Americans killed many Native Americans in order to occupy their land. It seems like racism from the popular group of Americans to the minority is a way of life. Currently, Americans who emigrated from the Middle East or who were born in America and practice Islam, are encountering racism from Americans. America needs to learn to distinguish who the real enemy is, and learn from its past mistakes. It seems like racism towards minority groups has grown weaker as each situation of racism occurs. Nearly annihilating an entire race of Native Americans is the first act of racism by Americans. Throwing an entire race into slavery because of their skin color is the second, but not as bad because the African Americans were not almost annihilated. The internment camps of World War II are the next example of racism. However, the Japanese Americans were neither killed nor forced into slavery. Currently, Middle Eastern Americans face racism from the general American public, but Middle Eastern Americans have not been killed in mass groups, forced into slavery, or sent to internment camps. Perhaps America is slowly learning from its mistakes. Hopefully the next time another country invades America, its citizens will not turn on other citizens who happen to be the same race as the attacker. Works Cited Ford, Jamie. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: a Novel. New York: Ballantine, 2009. Print. Hatamiya, Leslie T. Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1993. Print. Peterson, Tiffany. We Are America: Japanese Americans. Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2004. Print. Poynting, Scott and Greg Noble. Living with Racism: The experience and reporting by Arab and Muslim Australians of discrimination, abuse and violence since 11 September 2001. Sydney: Center for Cultural Research, 2004. Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. Print. Tateishi, John. And Justice for All: an Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps. New York: Random House, 1984. Print. Tunnell, Michael O., and George W. Chilcoat. The Children of Topaz: the Story of a Japanese-American Internment Camp : Based on a Classroom Diary. New York: Holiday House, 1996. Print. Read More