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Japanese Internment During World War II

Page history last edited by Robert W. Maloy 1 year, 11 months ago

 

external image Map_of_World_War_II_Japanese_American_internment_camps.jpg

 

 eBook Connection: Internment of Japanese Americans

 

 


After the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which ordered the removal of 120,000 Japanese-Americans to one of 10 internment camps.

 

  Executive Order 9066

Roosevelt's executive order was fueled by anti-Japanese feelings among politicians and many among the general public politicians who feared espionage. 

 

  • The camps were officially called "relocation centers" and were located in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.

 

    • Over 50% of those interned were children.


The military bypassed constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense.

 

  • "Relocation" consisted of the mass evacuation and detention of Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.


People were detained for up to four years, without due process of law or any factual basis.

 

  • They were forced to live in bleak, remote camps behind barbed wire and under the surveillance of armed guards.

 

    • Japanese American internment raised questions about the protection of the rights of American citizens as embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

 A video from the History Channel's YouTube account that discusses Japanese internment. 

 

 

 For a video tour of an interment camp click the link here.

 

 

Link here for explanation as well as first hand accounts from Japanese Americans

 

Go to this page to see some pictures of what the Internment Camps look liked from Archives.org.

 

Building History 3.0:  An Interactive Explorations of the Japanese American Incarceration in Minecraft

 

 Two important legal cases were brought against the United States concerning Japanese internment.


Hirabayashi v. United States (1943 ) and Korematsu v. United States (1944)

 

  • The defendants argued their Fifth Amendment rights were violated by the U.S. government due to the fact that they were citizens. In both cases, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government due to military necessity. Ten Americans were ultimately convicted of spying for the Japanese, and they were all Caucasian.

 

  • In 1944, two years after signing Executive Order 9066, President Roosevelt revoked the order. The last internment camp was closed by the end of 1945.


No official apology came from the United States government until The Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Letter from President George Bush to Japanese internees

 

  Learning plan on Japanese Internment from Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/fear/

 

Farm workers, Manzanar Relocation Center, Ansel Adams Photograph, 1943

Farm workers, Manzanar Relocation Center., Ansel Adams Photograph, 1943


A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans & the U.S. Constitution from the Smithsonian Museum of American History that uses images, music and text to explore the experience of citizens placed in detention camps during World War II.

external image Red_apple.jpgLearning Plans from the Mananzar National Historic Site.Focuses on the experiences at one of the primary internment camps.

Children of the Camps is a PBS documentary (and accompanying website) about the experiences of six Japanese-Americans who were detained as children.

 

Interview with George Takei about growing up and living in an internment camp.


Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project offers multimedia materials including a slideshow and videos as well as oral histories from Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during World War II.

Click here for a short video from the US government explaining the decision to create internment camps

 


external image Red_apple.jpgThe Internment Diary of Toyojiro Suzuki from the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

 


A collection of Ansel Adams' photographs showing life in a Japanese Internment camp.

 


Read about the experiences in the internment camps of a now 87 year-old woman in this article

Google Doodle January 30, 2017
Google Doodle January 30, 2017

 

Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu
Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu

 

Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution

 

Fred Koresmatsu, Densho Encyclopedia (2019)

 


Fred Koresmatsu Day

 

  • Enacted in California in 2010 
    • First state-wide day in the United States named after an Asian American

 

    • Hawaii, Virginia and Florida have also passed laws honoring Fred Korematsu to perpetuity


It's Fred Korematsu Day: Celebrating a Foe of U.S. Internment Camps, NPR (January 30, 2017)

Honoring a Japanese-American Who Fought Against Internment Camps

 

There are other people who are honored by other states for other reasons:

 

Whose Heritage?  Public Symbols of the Confederacy, Southern Poverty Law Center (February 1, 2019)

 

 

 

 

Italian-American Internment

 

In August 2010, the state of California formally expressed regret for the internment of some 600,000 Italian Americans during World War II.

 

  • The 1942 “Alien Enemies Act” labeled all non-citizen Italian-Americans and their families as “enemy aliens” who were subject to a seizure of property, a mandatory curfew, restricted areas that they could not enter, and a mandate to carry identification cards at all times. 

 


Click here to read more about Italian-American internment from the Italian Historical Society of America

A little known fact, Canada also interned Italian-Canadian males in 26 different internment camps throughout the country. Read more about the experiences of those interned, here

See Brief Overview of the World War II Enemy Alien Control Program from the National Archives

 

 

 

Quiz Question 

 

How many Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during WWII? 

 

A) 120

B) 1,200

C) 12,000

D 120,000

 

Answer D

Of course this number isn’t exact but it emphasizes the large number of Japanese Americans that were affected by internment.  

 

 

 

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