These Japanese Americans who were essentially American citizens were forced to evacuate from their homes, give up everything that they own and move to internment camps mainly in the West Coast. The first of these internment camps, which is now termed "concentration camps" is in Manzanar, somewhere in California.
The Executive Order 9066 was issued in February 19th, 1942 by then President Franklin Roosevelt to put these Japanese descendants into camps because of "military necessity." Even though there was no evidence of any disloyalty among these Japanese people and 2/3 of these people were actual American citizens, they were still forcibly put into the camps. They were only all released in 1945. The constitution that claims that all citizens have "equal protection of the law" was not taken into account.
Child at the Los Angeles Railroad Station: Clem Albers-p. 36 Newly Built Mess Halls at Manzanar: Clem Albers-p. 45
Although they were not tortured in any ways like the concentration camps in Germany. These Japanese people lost everything they had. They were forced to give up their properties, houses, and business to live in these military barracks just because the U.S government doubted their loyalty. They didn't even have any prove of any disloyalty from these Japanese people. Most of internees were little children.
Some say that the Americans have all the right to discriminate against the Japanese for what they had done in Pearl Habor. Even today, the old generations of Malaysians still hate the Japanese for what they had done during the Second World War.
However, the U.S government didn't do anything towards the German immigrants even though the U.S were at war with German at that time.
So was the discrimination purely based upon race or the nationality?
6 comments:
hey, this is a good piece of info...
i guess there is definitely a strong flavour of racism here. but if you do take a look at the other side of the coin... the americans were really angry with japanese due to pearl harbour. one would argue, the germans didnt inflict any physical damage in US soil. guess it's emotional ignorance.
Haha.. I argued that to my professor too but he was adamant that the Germans were indeed the enemy. So why didn't they get the same treatment as the Japanese?
Racial discrimination is still evident here. That's just the way it is when you're different, especially when you're non-white.
i don't think racism would be wiped out from this earth. humans are so delicate to be swayed by false claims.
i'm from KL, malaysia.
Blogger SCH said...
I had thought the same thing- that it was purely a racist act. But upon further research, it appears that Germans, Italians and Asians were all interned at camps. It does not appear that the Italians and Germans lost their citizen rights as the Asians did, but they were also mistreated and unjustly imprisoned. Here is a link with some info: http://www.gaic.info/camp_temporary.htm#glouce
Anonymous - While it may not have been a PURELY racist act, there was definitely a strong flavor of racism to this aspect of U.S. History. There were, indeed, SOME Italians and Germans who were interned, but not many - and not without cause. All the Japanese were rounded up and interned, not just ones who did something wrong. If you think about it from a purely pragmatic perspective, how could they possibly have rounded up everyone of Italian and German descent in the U.S. and interned them? it would have been too difficult - too many people, some of whom had been citizens for generations. The Japanese were easy targets because they could be identified by the way they looked (think: racial profiling). Besides, if I'm not mistaken, there were many instances of the U.S. finding actual evidence that German citizens had in some way helped out Germany, and not even one instance of there being evidence that a Japanese citizen helped Japan. (I could be wrong, but I remember reading that somewhere at some point while researching the internment camps).
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