“Down in our hearts we cried and cursed this government every time when we showered with sand.
We slept in the dust; we breathed the dust; we ate the dust,” Joseph Kurihara, an internee at the Manzanar internment camp in California stated in his experience during the war. Japanese internment camps were the term used to describe the relocation and confinement of Japanese American during World War II. Japanese internees often questioned why the government decided on moving the Japanese U. S. citizens without accusing the millions of people of German or Italian that sided with Japan.They wanted to know why the United States laid the blame on them when they were already employed as U.
S. citizens. Japanese American found them in great pressure throughout the war. I concluded that the start of this war between the United States and Japan was a critical, brutal war because it caused circumstantial damages to both countries and lost economic resources.
However the war also opened people’s mind about racial matters; the United States apologize forty years later.The war was both a virtuous and wicked incident. The U. S. egan the internment following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7th, 1941. A Japanese air armada destroyed much of Pearl Harbor causing the United States to enter World War II.
Fearing that the people of Japanese descent might blow up crucial facilities or that they might spy on U. S. military bases, military leaders argued that Japanese American should be evacuated. In February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was compelled to sign Executive Order 9066, excluding more than 110,000 Japanese American from the West coast and southern Arizona.
The evacuation of the West coast Japanese American to assembly centers began in the spring of 1942. Most of the interned Japanese American was children and two-thirds of them were U. S. citizens. Japanese who moved to the United States are called Issei; hence the children of Issei are called Nisei and Nisei’s children are called Sansei.
They were excluded not because they commit crimes, but because of the war between the United States and Japan. Therefore Japanese American was confiscated legally under Executive Order 9066.Ten relocation camps opened in fall of 1942. Japanese American was forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family members were separated and put into different camps.
President Roosevelt himself called the 10 facilities "concentration camps. " Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders.Because each person could only take two bags, families had to store or sell most of their belongings; packing their life in two bags.
Chieko Hirata wrote in his document “The month of May when I was attending school, all the residents of Hood River county, as well as the people of the whole western coast was surprised to receive such an unexpected order of evacuation… I am always hoping that this war will end, so that I will be able to go back to Parkdale, my home town and see all my old friends, and live to my dying days in my old home in Parkdale, Oregon.Many citizens and government officials were afraid that the Japanese citizens living on the West Coast would assist in the invasion of the United States of America thus United States interned the Japanese living on the west coast. Survival was difficult in the internment camps. Japanese internees in America and Canada lived in tarpaper-covered barracks with no heating or plumbing. The camps were grossly overcrowded, and living conditions were dangerously unsanitary.
The only heat provided to the Japanese was the heat from as many blankets as they could scrounge.The barracks were hot in the summer but extremely cold in the winter. Many of the camps were located in the desert and faced unbearable temperatures. The summer average temperature reached over 100° F while the winter average temperature fell to -30° F. Internees were also fed extremely inadequately.
Each internee was given forty-eight cents worth of food, which was served in a congested mess hall. Beef brains, tongue, kidneys and liver were the mainstay of the kitchen. As a result of these conditions, many internees froze or starved to death; some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to emotional stresses they encountered.Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders. As of May 13, 1942, a forty five years old man Ichiro Shimada, a Los Angeles gardener is shot to death by guards while trying to escape from Fort Still, Oklahoma internment camp.
Japanese Americans were watched over by the tall guard towers surrounding the camp and the guards armed with weapons. The internees felt like prisoners behind the barbed wires. The assembly centers offered simple accommodations with little privacy and many small attacks on evacuee’s self-respect.Camp life included classes for children and adults and both Buddhist and Christians religious services. The camp set up “self-government” with limited powers; Issei could not hold elective positions. Internees were given confidence to work camp-sponsored self-help programs.
All of the relocation centers operated farming and often exchanged the food grown there between camps. Activities such as indoor and outdoor games, dances, civic associations, Boy Scout troops, Parent Teacher Associations and little theater companies and athletic competitions helped ease the burden of life in the shadow of the watchtower.As a result of all of these labors, life did continue behind the barbed wire. When World War II finally ended in September 2, 1945, more than 4,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were sent directly to Japan from permanent War Relocation Authority camps.
Army lifted its ban on Japanese American in the west coast at the end of 1944. The WRA camps closed down gradually over the next fourteen months. Tule Lake was the last of the relocation camps. After loyalty checks, the WRA let some Japanese Americans leave the camps for work and college.With little help from the government, Japanese Americans had to rebuild their lives. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 or G.
I. Bill helped Japanese American veterans to buy home, start business, and go to college. By 1946, Japanese Americans were released from the internment camps, but the injustice of the war years was not forgotten. When the internees were liberated, they hope to live their normal life again, but whilst they rest their eyes on their old homes, everything was a mess.Roughly 50 years later, through the deeds of leaders and advocates of the Japanese American community, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
Commonly identified as the Japanese American Redress Bill, this act acknowledged that "a grave injustice was done" and consented Congress to pay each victim of internment $20,000 in reparations. The reparations were sent with a signed apology from the President of the United States on behalf of the American people. The period for reparations ended in August of 1998.
