The Japanese Internment and the Animosity that Lead up to it

The Japanese Internment and the

Animosity that Lead up to it

How would you feel if you were forced to abandon your home or business for no reason other than your ethnicity? That is exactly what the American government did to the Japanese living in the United States during World War II. The Japanese-Americans, the majority of them American citizens, were forced to leave their homes and many of their belongings in order to be incarcerated in concentration camps. This act of discrimination against the Japanese-Americans had a huge impact on their lives; however, some positive came the situation. This blemish on American history has helped many people in recent generations, as well as people today, realize that it is not fair to deny people their constitutional rights or discriminate against someone for reasons such as ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

The evacuation of 1942 did not occur in a vacuum, but was based on almost a century of anti-Oriental fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding (Daniels 2).

English: United States President Franklin D. Roose...

Poster for Thirteenth Naval District, United State...

English: Diagram indicating Japanese American sett...

Immigration from China, which started around 1849, created an entirely new strain of American racism from which the Japanese-Americans were to suffer greatly (Daniels 3). The Chinese men competed with white workingmen for jobs. The Chinese were willing to work for less and as the jobs for white men decreased the amount of tension and hostility towards the Orientals increased. Eventually the hatred of the Chinese became so intense that the courts refused to accept their testimonies and mobs and gangs physically abused them (Daniels 4).

When the Japanese began to immigrate to the United States in the early 1900's there was already racial tension towards people of Oriental background. At anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese meetings it was protested that the Chinese and Japanese are not the stuff of which American citizens can be made (Britannica...