Japanese American Internment

Essential Questions: 1. Why were Japanese-Americans interned during World War II?2. What occurred after Executive Order 9066?

Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941

USS Arizona

Why were J-Americans Interned?

• Ethnicity was the cause…not because of a threat to US security

• Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were considered “subversive”

• They were on the coast and thus too close to Japan

Newspapers add fuel to the fire

• Ugly stories ran to support anti-Japanese feelings

Executive Order 9066• February 19, 1942• Gave the Army the complete authority to remove

Japanese immigrants and American citizens alike from the Pacific coast

• Justified as necessary for national security

Executive Order 9066• More than 110,000 Japanese Americans shipped to

“relocation centers” • Relocation center = prison camp• Charges never files against Japanese Americans

Relocation• Internees were taken from their homes• They lost their possessions—forced to sell

homes and businesses

Relocation in Stages• 1st phase: internees transported on trains /buses under

military guard to the temporary detention centers.

• Temporary centers were built on race tracks, fairgrounds, or livestock pavilions. Prisoners lived in livestock stalls or windowless shacks that were crowded w/out ventilation, electricity, and sanitation facilities. Food was often spoiled; shortage of food and medicine.

• 2nd phase: approximately 500 deportees daily moved to permanent concentration camps. Camps were in remote, uninhabitable areas. In the desert camps, daytime temperatures often reached 100 + degrees. Sub-zero winters were common in the northern camps.

Internment camp locations

Key Terms for Japanese Americans• Issei: First generation Japanese immigrants in US• Nisei: Second generation Japanese-Americans—2/3 of internees• Sansei: Third-generation Americans. Neither they nor their parents

had ever known any other life than their life in the United States.• Thousands joined the armed forces—many as part of the 442nd

Regimen.

Manzanar

Life in the Camps

• The internment camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

• Armed guards patrolled the perimeter and were instructed to shoot anyone attempting to leave.

• Many families were assigned to one barrack and lived together with no privacy.

• A demonstration in Manzanar over the theft of food by personnel led to violence in which two died and many were injured.

Life in the Camps• The prisoners worked to build a community, painting

the barracks, planting fruit trees and gardens and even digging small ponds in the hope of capturing some semblance of the pre-attack normalcy.

• Supported the war effort.

Mess Hall

A Room in Camp

The Fight for Justice

• Japanese Americans fought in the courts and in Congress

• Korematsu v. United States: 1944, Supreme Ct. decided that forced evacuation was justified as a “military necessity”

• Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) worked to have the government compensate those who had lost property

Korematsu and Rosa Parks

Redress & Reparations

• The Bill passed (under President Ronald Reagan) 1988

• Surviving internees were given $20,000 in 1990 and an official apology from the President (George H. Bush)

• “We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.”

Manzanar Monument

Manzanar National Monument: The best-preserved of the ten camps where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II.