Effects Of Japanese Internment Camps

Superior Essays
Japanese-American internment camps had devastating effects in the United States by raising issues among the internees on how to reconcile their cultural identities amidst growing resentment and discrimination. .2 The camps were established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 and stated that fall people with Japanese ancestry living in the Pacific Coast region should be placed in internment camps.1 President Roosevelt justified the camps as a necessary effort to ensure “the successful prosecution of the war [it] requires every possible protection against espionage and sabotage to national defense utilities.” The Japanese internment camps were a result of years of tension and discrimination towards the Japanese community. However, this was not an effort to help the war because “not a single documented act of sabotage or espionage had been committed by an American citizen or resident of Japanese ancestry.” This act of discrimination was a struggle only those with Japanese ancestry faced and as a consequence many imprisoned internees faced a cultural identity struggle. Cultural identity is defined as one’s identity to a group usually based on their feelings of belonging to that one group. Cultural identity can be influenced by political or economic dominant culture. It is possible that Japanese-Americans living in the Pacific Coast region from 1942 to 1945 may have experienced a cultural identity struggle as their Japanese ethnicity, lead to discrimination and their eventual placement in an internment camp. The change in cultural identity for those living in the internment camps can be described in three main phases: divulging of their identity from their Japanese heritage, a formation of a new identity, and the forming of a new mixed identity that included American and Japanese culture. Japanese-Americans had been discriminated for years, by denying their right to vote or own land . However, the bombing of Pearl Harbor had released an outcry that was ultimately unignorable. Rumors spread that the Japanese planned to sabotage the American war effort. The Roosevelt administration was eventually pressured into removing Japanese- Americans from the west coast, “by agricultural interests seeking to eliminate Japanese competition, a public fearing sabotage, and politicians hoping to gain by aligning against this unpopular group.” Japanese-Americans were targeted, not because of any factual evidence, but because the overwhelming public opinion (held that Japanese-Americans were more disloyal simply because of their racial ties. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally gave his full support of an evacuation plan, he authorized “the military to name ‘military areas’ from which ‘any or all persons’ could be kept out.” The internees were forced to give up private property and were then sent to a local assembly centers, and then, sometimes even months later, were sent to one of ten internment camps in eastern California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. These camps were in areas with hostile and adverse weather conditions and surrounded by barbed wire and armed …show more content…
In the newspapers established at each internment camp, “rarely did the term ‘Japanese-American appear; instead internees were referred to as ‘colonists’...All camp papers referred to U.S governmental authorities, or non-internees, as the ‘Caucasians.”9 The internees refused to make a distinction between themselves and other Americans,. Despite their rights as American citizens being stripped away and they being confined within barbed wire, internees still truly believed they were Americans. The internees stressed their American identity to try to get rid of the idea that they were different from their American counterparts. They did not want conform to the belief that Japanese Americans would be against America in the war …show more content…
Not only did they create physical and economic scars on the internees, but they also affected their cultural identity . Internees struggled to define their cultural identity. nyMany internees were tied to America legally, but the government had taken away their rights and treated them horribly. Internees at first decided to suppress their Japanese cultural identity, choosing to express their American identity more. However, they later grew resentful and questioned authority, eventually coming to embrace their Japanese ancestry. By the end of the internment period, internees formed a new mixed identity, although many still doubted the American ideals they had once

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