United+States

United States

==The United States government used the tensions between the US and Japan as rationalization for imprisoning innocent Japanese Americans in secret internment camps. ==

On February 19th, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order granted the US military the power to ban tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to domestic security. 120,000 people of Japanese decent living in a designated costal area stretching from Washington State or southern Arizona were removed from their homes and places in internment camps throughout the country for the duration of the war.This controlled where people were allowed to live in order to unify and rid the US of the enemy.

Prisoners were only allowed to bring what they could carry in their arms to the camps. All the rest of their belongings were sold to the public at substantial discounts.

The camps were operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Nationalities that were thrown into the camps include Japanese Americans arrested by the FBI, members of Axis nationalities residing in Latin-American countries, and Axis sailors arrested in American ports after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The purpose of these camps was to secure the Western Hemisphere from internal sabotage and to provide bartering pawns for the exchange of American citizens captured by Japan and Germany. This is seen when the U.S. government identified the kidnapped victims of Jewish German background, sent their names to Hitler's bureaucrats, and then shipped them off to Germany in exchange for Americans. The prisoners never did anything specifically wrong, but because the Axis powers were the enemy and seen as responsible for all the disorder around the globe, innocent townspeople are thrown in camps and forced to work.



The US justified their action by claiming that there was a danger of those of Japanese descent spying for the Japanese. However more than two thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. None had ever shown disloyalty to the nation. In some cases family members were separated and put in different camps. During the entire war only ten people were convicted of spying for Japan and these were all Caucasian.

Fred Koremastu, an American-born citizen of Japanese descent, refused to leave his home in California. He appealed his conviction and in 1944 his case reached the Supreme Court. With a majority of 6-3, Koremastu's conviction was upheld. The government's reasoning was that the loyalties of some Japanese Americans resided with their ancestral country, and that because separating the "disloyal from the loyal" was impossible, the internment order must apply to all Japanese Americans within the restricted area. Koremastu's story further emphasizes the falsity in putting people like him into internment camps.



Some internees died from inadequate medical care and the high level of emotional stress they suffered. Those taken to camps in desert areas had to cope with extremes of temperature. The camps controlled every aspect of the prisoners life, from food to housing to work.



The camps were guarded by military personnel and those who disobeyed the rules, or who were deemed to be troublesome, were sent to the Tule Lake facility located in the North California Cascade Mountains. In 1943 those who refused to take the loyalty oath were sent to Tula Lake and the camp was renamed a segregation center.

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