Japanese Internment Camps - Research Paper Example

(Lee and Kathleen, 2011, p606) In addition to the Japanese racial origin, the Japanese navy attack on the Pearl Harbor made the Japanese Americans residing in the United States to be regarded as dangerous and untrustworthy. Two thirds of the Japanese detained were Japanese born in America and included both the elderly and the young. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire fence and had heavily guarded by military personnel. The attack on Pearl Harbor left the American citizens in great fear of another attack.

This made the representatives of the sates put a lot of pressure on by then President Roosevelt to take firm action against Japanese descent living in the U.S. (historyonthenet.com, 2011) On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066. This order gave the Secretary of War and Military Commanders Authority to come up with military restricted zones to in deal with US national security threats and breaches from dangerous individuals. Even though the Executive Order 9066 did not identify the Japanese America as the targets, the Japanese living in California, Oregon and Washington became the first target.

This was primarily because of an idea that was erroneously held that the West Coast of Japanese posed a major threat to America due to its proximity. The Japanese Americans living in Hawaii were exempted from detention so as provide labour for the agricultural economy of the Americans living in Hawaii region. (Lee and Kathleen, 2011, p607) The War Relocation Authority (WRA) established ten permanent internment camps in US. These sites included Topaz in Utah; Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas; Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Granada in Colorado; Minidoka in Idaho and Heart Mountain in Wyoming.

This internment camps were established hurriedly to house a community of thousands of the Japanese American families. (Lee and Kathleen, 2011, p608) Under the terms of the signed Executive Order 9066, a population of 120,000 people of Japanese America living the US were forcefully removed from their homes and taken to internment camps located in different regions in the US. They had been given only 48 hours to vacate from their homes. The justification by the US government for their actions was that the Japanese Americans were spying for the Japanese and thus were dangerous.

Among those interned were American citizens and half of the population were children who had not in the past shown any disloyalty to the state. (historyonthenet.com, 2011) Depending on the regions, the internment camps were established. the prevailing extreme weather conditions like dust storms, high temperatures, strong winds and blizzards caused a great misery to the Japanese Families. The Japanese internees had been allowed to bring with them only a few belongings from their homes. Within the camps, privacy was minimal or even non-existent as strangers lived in the same barracks and required to share rest rooms which were not partitioned and even had to use common areas for washing and cooking and access to adequate food was a problem.

In the camps, health care was poor and a lot of people suffered from high levels of emotional stress and some even died. (thinkquest.org, 2011) Also, the Japanese Americans were placed under maximum supervision and were subjected to styles known as Jim Crown that involved restrictions such as controlled gathering and numerous