Download Japanese American Internment Camp

Rezwana Islam
LIB200.6501
Prof. Thomas Regan
11/11/2007
Assignment #
Japanese American Internment Camp
Japanese American Internment was the forced exclusion and
internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese American (62%
of whom were U.S. citizen) from the West Coast of the United States during
World War II. The Japanese men, women, and children who were resided in
the United States were sent to hastily constructed camps called War
Relocation Centers in remote portions of the nation’s interior. On February
19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt
signed Executive Order 9066. The evacuation order commenced the roundup of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of ten internment
camps. These ten internment camps were located in California, Idaho, Utah,
Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.
Roosevelt’s executive order was fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment
among farmers who competed against Japanese labor, politicians who sided
with anti-Japanese constituencies, and the general public, whose frenzy was
heightened by the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. More than 2/3 of the
Japanese who were interned in the spring of 1942 were citizens of the United
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States. Most internees suffered significant property losses. Upon evacuation,
the Japanese American internees were told that they could bring only as
many articles of clothing, toiletries and other personal effects as they could
carry. The US government promised to find a place to store larger items
(such as furniture) if boxed and leveled, but did not make any promises
about the security of those items.
The U.S. internment camp not only were overcrowded but also
provided poor living conditions. According to a 1943 report published by the
War Relocation Authority, Japanese Americans were housed in “tarpapercovered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking
facilities of any kind”. As stated by Richard S. Nishimoto, “Coal was hard to
come by, and internees slept under as many blankets as they were allotted.
Food was rationed out at an expense of 48 cents per internee, and served by
fellow internees in a mess hall of 250-300 people” (Inside an American
Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at Poston, Arizona).
Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the Nisei,
or American-born Japanese. The older generations, or the Issei, were forced
to watch as the government promoted their children and ignored them.
Eventually the government allowed the internees to leave the concentration
camps if they enlisted in the U.S. army. This offer was not well received.
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Only 1,200 internees chose to do so. As stated by Mikiso Hane, a professor
of History at Knox College, in The journal of American History, “if our
inability to resist the evacuation and internment is understandable, how can
we justify our meek behavior in camp when we were asked to prove our
loyalty after we had been judged as potentially dangerous enemy aliens and
had been interned?” This expression showed the sentimental downfall that
Japanese American went through during their time in the internment camp.
In 1944, two and a half years after signing Executive order 9066,
fourth-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescinded the order. The last
internment camp was closed by the end of 1945.
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Works Cited
Hane, Mikiso. Wartime Internment. The Journal of American History,
Vol.77, No. 2. (Sep., 1990), pp. 569-575.
http://links.jstore.org/sici?sici
Nishimoto, S Richard. Inside an American Concentration Camp: Japanese
American Resistance at Poston, Arizona. Pacific Historical Review:
Vol. 65, No. 4. (1995), pp. 691-692. http://www.jstore.org/view
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