The Japanese American Internment - Research Paper Example

? The Japanese American Internment The Japanese American Internment The Japanese-American internment came to them as asurprise in 1942 when nearly 110,000 Japanese Americans besides those who lived along the United States’ Pacific coast were sent to “War Relocation Camps” during the attack on Pearl Harbor. This internment was so unjust that the Japanese American who lived on the West Coast were interned while among those in Hawaii, who outnumbered the former by 40,000 Japanese Americans, only 1800 were interned. More than fifty percent of interned were citizens of America. This internment was authorized by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 under the Executive Order 9066. The wartime incarceration of the Japanese Americans was the biggest mistake made by the Americans which they can only regret by erecting memorial such as that in the national Capitol which reminds them of the 120,000 Japanese American kept in the concentration camp and 26,000 who served in the US army during World War II or by doing extensive and exhaustive research so as to prove their guilt for the action1. The World War II brought with it a series of actions and events which affected Japanese Americans in many ways. The attack on Pearl Harbor along with the overpowering Japanese offensive through the Pacific as well as the Southeast Asia was a stun to the American military leaders as well as the civilian leaders. The US Navy had long realized that the Japan was the most expected enemy since its defeat of the Czarist Russia in 1905. As a result the American intelligence agencies had made a pre-war plan to ensure the interning of certain enemy “aliens”.2 Daniels clearly states that the internment of the Japanese American was merely a “lawless exercise of power by the executive branch” although both the Congress and the Supreme Court gave an absolution for the action. He also draws a distinction between internment and incarceration; since the notion that the Japanese American citizens were treated like members of the Holocaust in “concentration camps” was considered an abuse to them it was referred by the Americans as “Assembly Centers” or “Relocation Centers”. This shows how the treatment of the Japanese Americans was packed with euphemisms.3 It is also been observed by researchers such as Schidkraut that the impact of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 has revived the American national consciousness with regard to the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. This compels one to deeply investigate into the role of American identity in response to the terrorist attacks which have taken place so far. US population underwent an ethnic makeup in real and dramatic scenarios which occurred quite rapidly during World Wars. This led to a change in sentiments of the natives during the mid 1990s. The role of media during the World War II was severe and extremely brutal in terms of American national consciousness. This was evident by the following piece of information recollected by Schidkraut, “During WWII, media commentators said we need not worry that bombing cities in Japan might kill innocent civilians because there was no such thing as an innocent Japanese civilian.”4 Studying from the perspective of the Japanese-American and what they went through when they learnt of this incarceration, several researches reveal how hard it was for the Japanese Americans to pack their bags and leave the comfort of their homes to a seclusion which had no prescribed limit. At first they were taken to the Assembly Centers from where they were to be moved to the relocation centers. For others it was known as either the internment or to be kept in the concentration camps. This was the beginning of the loss of freedom for the Japanese Americans. The Americans started to marginalize any outsider or immigrant from any other country including Japan. They called such people aliens. Those aliens who entered the US legally were eligible to apply for citizenship later on. This process is known as naturalization. Michael Burgan narrates the life of Yoshiko’s and others’ families who were victim of internment. With the coming of the attack on Pearl Harbor Americans started fearing that the Japanese would attack on Hawaii as well. During World War II most of the Japanese Americans lived in the West Coast of America. Hence they also feared that Japan would strike places such as California, Washington and Oregon in particular. The decision to send them to the concentration camps was the only way the Americans thought the country would remain secure. The detention of the Japanese Americans was also due to racism which instigated long before World War II when a few newspaper publishers and lawmakers started fearing that the Japanese were warlike and deceitful in nature.5 Daniel writes that the court was fully aware of the discrimination caused to the minorities and the actions which were to be taken against them: “The Roosevelt administration never intended to intern any sizable percentage of those million alien enemies. Attorney General Francis Biddle, a civil libertarian of sorts, and his staff in the Department of Justice wanted a minimal program and were aware of the gross injustices suffered by German and Italian resident aliens in Great Britain.”6 Americans started cursing the Japanese as the Japanese Imperial Army continued to be victorious after the victory at Pearl Harbor. Government started depicting them as “rats, dogs, gorillas, and snakes.” There were hate-filled articles nearly in all the news publications as part of the propaganda which heightened the suspicions of the public who started loathing Japanese ancestry.7 The government eventually imposed curfew on the “enemy aliens” who were citizens of the nations at war against the United States. Japanese underwent the hardest time because they were easily distinguishable from Caucasians which mounted suspicion unlike for the Germans and Italians. In order to stay away from the chariness of the US forces, the Chinese began identifying themselves with a label that they were not Japanese and that they hated them as much as the whites did.8 Japanese and Chinese immigrants settled in the West Coast during the late nineteenth century. It was not until the “Gentleman’s Agreement between 1907 and 1908 that the Japanese began to confront discrimination. With the coming of the World War II the differences had grown to such extents that it was difficult to distinguish the right from wrong. Hence it can be very conveniently said that there were certain personalities actively involved in the internment of the Japanese Americans. The major decision to relocate the population was taken by the legal government office which included the President, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lieutenant Colonel John DeWitt, and Colonel Karl R. Bendetsen, members of Roosevelt’s cabinet, Secretary of War Henry Stimson…” and many more that were the key figures in the internment and evacuation period. They include the leaders of JACL, Mike Masaoka, Saburo Kido, James Sakamoto, and Colonel John. Another set of Japanese and non-Japanese worked towards describing the concentration camps for scholarly benefits. Another set of people who contributed to the significance of the camps were the Japanese artists who painted the lives inside the concentration camps. Considered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of America, its reinterpretation only brings out more intricate details about the characters and actions involved in the Japanese American wartime experience through those who interned themselves.9 As ordered by the President the soldiers tacked up posters instructing the Japanese Americans to quit their business, withdraw their children from schools, pack their pets, and make the necessary arrangements to leave the town immediately. This order of evacuation was applied on both the rich and the poor. Even those boys and girls with Japanese ancestry were removed from the orphanage. The first generation of Japanese was ill-treated and was forced to entrust properties worth $200 million to Caucasian friends and lawyers. One is yet again compelled to ask why this episode occurred in the history of United States. It was a harsh reality but even the Japanese people resented the ignorant Europeans and Americans who deliberately treated them as inferiors.10 One of the ugliest pictures sketched for the Japanese Americans was the rehabilitation of their image. At the time of war when the United States decided to take the Japanese American on board the American Army, the US “propaganda machine” began singing the hymns of Japanese American patriotism and valor. “These pre-September 1l events, spread across nearly half a century, do not amount to very much when compared to what was done to Japanese Americans. But, similarly, no crisis comparable to World War II had occurred. All of these instances were violations of the spirit of the Constitution and they did happen even in a society in which both racial prejudice and xenophobia had been reduced. What might have happened had they been accompanied by some great crisis or outrage-suppose, for example, that Iran had decided to execute the American hostages on television-is frightening to contemplate.”11 The American national consciousness is an unavoidable mystery which reawakens time and again because it has invited people from all over the world to serve the larger purpose of slavery in order to establish their states. Both Daniels and Schildkraut seem to believe that the Americans showed injustice to the Japanese Americans by interning them to the concentration camps. Optimists still believe that the episode of incarceration is a thing of the past which hopefully is true, but the Japanese Americans who have been traumatized by the events in the past because they were the only group of citizens to be incarcerated in large numbers only because of their genes still fear that the history might repeat itself. The multiethnic identity of the Americans, however, brings them to the brink of collapsing because it is very hard for them to digest the minorities as part of their culture without any agitation.12 The Americans have a history of hostility against the minorities but what happened during World War II with the Japanese Americans is beyond understanding of any history student who tries to capture the role of the elite and the public in the enactment of the event and its closure. For the Japanese Americans who had to give up on their comfortable homes to be suddenly shifted to the relocation camps it was a loss not only in terms of money but also in terms of their development as a tribe. These hardworking people were far more sophisticated that the Americans or the Europeans for that matter. The self interest as opposed to symbolic politics analyses suggested by Schildkraut is more likely to predict the support for profiling rather than fearing the terrorist attack on the United States. The restrictions faced by the Japanese Americans were a proof of tolerance towards the multiethnic and multicultural United States. The Japanese strength at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor could never be seen again because the threat and the actions taken by the United States as a consequence were such that no Japanese American could stand up and speak for their own rights.13 This internment was only the beginning for the Japanese Americans who were refused to be accepted as innocent by the news publishers and media cooperates. Not much can be said about the role of the Japanese in causing the Americans to take such actions. Had the Japanese army realized that the best way to deal with the Americans would be to manipulate them as they were doing the Japanese Americans, they might have conveniently avoided the actions which took the Americans by surprise and brought them on toes against their enemies. One can only believe that the events cannot be rolled back but the propaganda for future can be avoided because the presence of multiethnic groups in the United States is unavoidable and it is not difficult to control the actions in order for them stay at ease and yet serve the enemies for the rest of their lives in case they could not be released from imprisonment. Bibliography Primary Sources: 1. Daniels, Roger. 2002. "Incarceration of the Japanese Americans: A Sixty-Year Perspective". History Teacher. 35 (3): 297-310. 2. Schildkraut, Deborah J. 2002. "The More Things Change...American Identity and Mass and Elite Responses to 9/11". Political Psychology. 23 (3): 511-535. Secondary Source: 3. Burgan, Michael. 2007. The Japanese American internment: civil liberties denied. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books. 4. Cooper, Michael L. 2000. Fighting for honour: Japanese Americans and World War II. New York: Clarion Books. 5. Ng, Wendy L. 2002. Japanese American internment during World War II: a history and reference guide. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Read More