“And Prejudice Will Find No Dwelling Place”: Japanese Internment Policies During World War Two
For an amalgamated collection of ethnicities, origins, and socio-economic stations, America has a unique challenge towards providing equality and mutual respect of minority populations. The postwar era was an extremely formative period in this regard. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment resulted in a dark period in American history. Navy Secretary Frank Knox only 12 days after the surprise attack “recommended the internment of all Japanese aliens on an outer island” (Takaki, 342). The construction be damned, a reactionary element within the government convinced President Roosevelt to place 120,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West coast of the mainland into forced internment even though F.B.I. director Hoover cited that “mass internment could not be justified for security reasons” (343). The anti-Japanese sentiment was running wild and exemplified by the abrasive comments of those like John L. Dewitt who remarked, “A Jap is a Jap is a Jap” grouping all Japanese Americans into one generalized dangerous group deserving of extreme treatments (343). Executive order 9066 set the internment policy firmly in place on February 19, 1942 by authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the deportation of Japanese and Italian-Americans to internment camps (344.) Reminiscent of Nazi treatment of European Jewry during WW2, Japanese-Americans were given numbers and placed upon railway trains bound for concentration camps (345,346). In 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in these camps during the war. They offered a formal apology and gave $20,000 to each surviving victim (From Wrong to Right).
Works Cited
"From Wrong To Right: A U.S. Apology For Japanese Internment." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2016. <http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/09/210138278/japanese- internment-redress>.
Takaki, Ronald T. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. Print.
Quote in title sourced from Internment poetry:
No comments:
Post a Comment