Japanese Internment Camps - Essay Example

Examine the removal of Japanese-Americans to concentration camps during WWII from the context of race. Compare and contrast it with the experiences of German and Italian Americans during the same period. Under no adequate grounds, Executive Order 9066 earned the approval in 1942 of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in relieving over 127,000 Japanese-American citizens from along the West Coast to the U.S. interior to be designated in relocation camps. Through the War Relocation Authority (WRA), interment faculties were established for Japanese-American evacuees forced to detention in camps despite unfavorable consequences to life, properties, culture, and general economy.

The meagreness of resources in the self-sufficient camps with separate residential communities and institutions such as hospitals, schools, and post offices, reflected deprivation of rights and unjust discrimination of ethnic origins. Looking into the nature of allegations, the basis for such an order was found to be prejudicial having emerged out of suspicion that Japanese in America at the time held loyalty to their homeland though no significant proof was conveyed to support this claim. The paranoia to racial injustice, however, is closest to the Pearl Harbor incidence which triggered the entry of U.S. to World War II when the Japanese empire advanced in offense at Pearl Harbor with the primary objective of neutralizing the U.S. Pacific fleet to be able to secure independence and chief resource advantage with the Dutch East Indies and the British Malaya.

From this perspective, American thought was rather disposed to consider the Japanese as rivals in reference to political and economic affairs and hence, such rivalry brought about racial conflict. Similarly, the internment sites were structured as well to fill German and Italian Americans arrested during the World War II. Unlike the internment of Japanese Americans, nevertheless, only non-citizen Italians were captivated as ‘enemy aliens’. The interned population included Italian diplomats and businessmen holding temporary residency in the United States as well as the Italian international students in the process of obtaining education in the U.S. in the period when Italy and U.S. were proclaimed under a state of war.

While some Italian merchants caught in the ports of the U.S. at the outbreak of war were sent to internment facilities, a number of Italian diplomats were granted the option to leave the country instead of relocation. Civilian internees of German descent, on the other hand, differed from the fate of the Japanese Americans in the sense that the former did not yield reparations nor apology from the American government and that only Germans without U.S. citizenship were subject to be detained. ReferencesKelly, Martin.

“Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar During World War II.” 2012. Web. 20 Mar 2012. http://americanhistory.about.com/cs/worldwarii/a/internment.htm. “Japanese-American Internment.” U.S. History Pre-Columbian to the New Millennium. 2012. Web. 20 Mar 2012. http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp.Fallon, Joseph E. “History of the Internment of German American Civilians in the United States During World War II.” 2012. Web. 20 Mar 2102. http://www.foitimes.com/internment/history.htm.