Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Impact of Japanese American Internment in the US

The internment of hundred of thousands of Japanese Individuals during Globe War II is 1 of infamous blotches inside United States’ experience with racial discrimination and human and civil rights violations. Though less discussed within the history books than the country’s fight against discriminatory practices against the African Americans, the incarceration with the Japanese Americans, nevertheless, has tainted the region with guilt. The reason for that is how the incarceration did not have profound benefits on the certain outcome from the war. Instead, it only meant the alienation and the violation from the members of the specific race that the US federal government judged with sweeping generalization as the enemy. The impact on the Japanese People in the usa was actually negative. They had to bear the harshness of living in substandard conditions and, worse of all, the racial prejudice that they suffered during the eyes on the American public. On a other hand, the stigma was felt and continues to be felt by American society itself. The internment has been regarded as an additional shameful chapter within the history of the country that prides itself of like a promoter of freedom, democracy, and civil rights.
The arrival of Japanese to the region were occurring a century ahead of World War II. The much more essential enhance in migration even so occurred inside the 1890’s. Ahead of Pearl Harbor was bombed, the single devastating event that prompted the united states to got war against Japan, government statistics already confirmed that there was virtually 200,000 those who were either born in Japan or were with Japanese ancestry. The us mainland, in particular the states along the Pacific coast have been home to over 125,000 of these men and women whilst the 150,000 were in Hawaii, which was then just a territory from the US. The death toll and the destruction brought about by what was regarded like a treacherous act by the Japanese in Pearl Harbor changed the image of the Japanese Americans from the eyes of the Americans. Spurred by the government’s unique paranoia over the existence of these persons inside country’s backyard, the American public started to treat the Japanese Americans with contempt and distrust. They started out to see them as “American citizens with enemy faces.” (Daniels et al 12)
The paranoia was initiated by a federal government report on the Pearl Harbor attack that came out in January 1942. Penned by US Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, the report with out a lot evidence alleged that the Japanese Individuals in Hawaii spied to your Japanese navy in preparation on the attack. Barely a month following the report came out congress members from the west coast states sent the united states president a letter that advised the immediate evacuation of Japanese People in their respective states. As the members of congress created their move, the united states Army’s Western Defense Command also sent a memorandum towards the Secretary of War that advised the removal each person of Japanese descent during the entire west coast area. In response to each recommendations by the members on the legislature and by the military area high command, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 which provided blanket authority for the Secretary of War and all military commanders to implement the recommendations. 1 component in the memorandum that influenced the President in issuing EO 9066 said that “in time of national peril, any reasonable doubt need to be resolved in favor of action to retain the national safety, not for your function of punishing people whose liberty may be temporarily affected by this sort of action, but for your purpose of protecting the freedom from the nation, which could be long impaired, if not permanently lost, by non-action.” (The War Relocation Authority) The President and his advisers clearly knew that the internment from the Japanese People could gravely affect their basic human rights. Nevertheless, driven by the sense of urgency to protect the region inside the enemy, they would rather incarcerate thousands of innocent Japanese American civilians than be at risk from spying activities by a few if there have been any proven.
The method taken to implement the internment was tainted with violations in the Japanese Americans’ right to privacy. The us Census Bureau, a department ran by civilians for purely civilian functions, was utilized to aid in identifying persons and families who need to be sent to internment. It took a role in spying neighborhoods and gathering information on Japanese Americans. The bureau vehemently denied this role but in 2007, following numerous decades, this was finally proven. (Minkel) America federal government in 1988, under President Ronald Reagan, came out using a legislation of an apology for the internment. It said how the decisions and actions of the US federal government regarding the status from the Japanese People in the usa anchored on “race prejudice, war hysteria, plus a failure of political leadership.” (100th Congress) As a result of this legislation, america federal government paid additional that $1.6 billion to Japanese People in the usa who were victims from the internment or have been heirs of individuals who suffered it.
It was just that, though late by many decades, america federal government issued an apology and paid reparations to your Japanese American victims of the mass internment. The sense of alienation and injustice resulting from mandatory evacuations was already painful. Doing it even worse, was the sub-human conditions in the internment camps and the separation from their properties and livelihood. The barracks exactly where the internees, many of these families, were made to live in barracks with barely insulation from the hot or cold weather. Quite a few from the barracks did not have plumbing as well as facilities for cooking. Some of them even had popular toilets. Simply because the barracks have been mostly manufactured by civilian contractors who commonly created the military’s camps, these were naturally unsuitable for family living. A few of the internment facilities such as the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming may perhaps have names that did not genuinely reflect the living conditions of the internees. In fact, the Heart Mountain facility genuinely appeared being a concentration camp having a “barbed-wire-surrounded enclave, un-partitioned toilets, cots for beds, along with a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for foods rations.” (Myer)
The conventional way of bringing up families was destroyed by the internment. Parents discovered it tough to discipline their young children mainly because the living arrangements during the barracks did not permit them so. If they insist on raising their voices while scolding their children, they would absolutely annoy their neighbors with whom they share a well-known thin wall. Due to this, “the nissei children, for their part, often ate with their peers during the mess hall and roamed around the camp in packs, thus further escaping the influence of their elders.” (O’Brien & Fugita 62) As are result of this, it was well-known for internment camps to acquire problems with juvenile delinquency.
Experiencing the problems of living in the internment camps had a good impact on Japanese Individuals in the duration of Globe War II. However, it was not the certain degree of depravation that they encountered that was serious enough for them. It was the psychological effect from the incarceration that was more overwhelming. Internment camp administrators admitted that they witnessed many Japanese Americans showed signs of depression. They also observed how the feelings of insecurity and helplessness have been prevalent inside camps’ population. On the other hand, there was quite a number who expressed apprehensions of living outside the camps and be with mainstream society. The reason for this was that they knew on the rabid anti-Japanese propaganda being spread close to and accepted by Americans. They were afraid of integrating themselves inside a society that may perhaps nevertheless contemplate them as enemies and suffer worse racial discrimination within the end. The internment, therefore, only embedded in them fear and hatred against themselves or against other races.
After the war, Japanese American internees have been released into mainstream society. They tried living as regular as they as soon as lived ahead of the internment but quite a few of them discovered it tough to recover. The no longer have the shops, farms, and jobs which were their sources of living. Opportunities of regaining these were bleak as the general population even now tended to treat them with contempt. Even though ahead of they share the same fate as the African People as victims of racial discrimination, following the war, even the African Individuals tended to treat them as a lesser race. Numerous many years after, adults who had been then young boys and girls during the internment camps nevertheless experienced episodes of depression. A former child internee wrote that even after all people decades, there had been nonetheless times after remembered his experience in an internment camp, and the “feeling of isolation and abandonment.” (Tateishi 130) Aside from these depressing memories that former internees continue to suffer, they also suffered confusion of their racial and national identity, specially the nissei. Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, another former infant internee, remembered a time when she was made to do a Japanese dance in the camp; “vulnerability and fragility exposed my old confusion: Am I Japanese or am I American in this barbed-wire camp, about to try and do a Japanese dance?” (Looking Like the Enemy 69)
The impact is nonetheless experienced by Japanese People in the usa of this generation. They nonetheless “have difficulty feeling at house in their adopted country.” (Alfaro 206) They even now fear the possibility how the individuals of other races upon seeing them would remember them as enemies who had the chance of partaking the opportunities accessible inside US. Majority with the American public nonetheless has to know the simple fact around the internment of Japanese Americans. This sad part of history need to have a positive impact on society, creating the folks additional vigilant against several varieties of racism.
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