Japanese+Re-Location+Camps


 * --Japanese Internment Camps--- **

media type="youtube" key="WiOSUN4EgVQ" height="295" width="383"

...It's March 2nd 1942, you have just received news that you will be removed from the west coast and relocated. You have not committed a crime; you have not been given the right of legal counsel, or even offered the rudiments of due process under Constitution. You are guilty by reason of race. You are Japanese. In the 1900s, there were two types of Japanese in America, Issei and Nisei. Issei were Japanese citizens who had immigrated to America to make their lives better but they couldn't become citizens of the US, due to the Naturalization Act of 1790. The descendants of the Issei were known as the Nisei and because they were born in America, they automatically became American citizens. Issei thought of themselves as Japanese. They spoke Japanese, ate rice and raw fish, practiced Buddhism, and played Japanese games such as GO (Japanese checkers.) Nisei thought of themselves as Americans, and were proud to be it. They spoke English, ate hamburgers and malts, practiced Christianity, and played baseball and football. The Nisei blended in with American society. The Japanese were great farmers. They could take hard soil and turn it into fertilized soil that supported plentiful crops. On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes bombed the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack destroyed 19 ships, killed 2,335 servicemen, and led the US to declare war on Japan and her allies, Germany and Italy. Shocked at the destruction of the 7th Fleet and the loss of American lives, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed December 7th, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." After Pearl Harbor the Nisei went to great lengths to show their patriotism. They flooded the streets to demonstrate their loyalty. They waved American flags and recited pledge of the Japanese American Citizens League. They bought war bands, donated blood, ran ads in newspapers showing patriotism, started a fundraising campaign to buy bombs for attacking Tokyo; they formed committees to make sure that no Japanese-American tried to help the Japanese, and they sent a telegram to the president, Roosevelt, pledging their loyalty. “During the days following Pearl Harbor, many friendships withered while others were severely tested. The usual places of recreation became uncomfortable. It was the start of a very painful period.” The white friends of Japanese were in a tough situation. Whites who defended the Nisei, or who were even seen with them, were suspected of disloyalty. Japanese were refused admittance into movie theaters, cafes, and roller-skating rinks.
 * Japanese in America: **
 * Pearl Harbor: **
 * After Pearl Harbor: **

 On February 19th, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the removal of all the Japanese from the west coast and their confinement in relocation camps- not because  they had done anything wrong, only because they came from a Japanese background. Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes to live at a camp. On March 2nd 1942, General DeWitt announced that all of Japanese ancestry would be removed from the west coast. Signs were posted everywhere informing that Japanese would have to be moved from their homes. Because the Japanese couldn't bring everything with them or leave anything behind (government declared that they were not responsible for any remaining possessions) Japanese had to sell many of their possessions. Whites came to Japanese neighborhoods to buy cars, furniture, houses, and farms at very low prices. Sentimental possessions had to be sold for a small fraction of their value, but some whites offered their Japanese friends to store their things. The Japanese did not really know what was going to happen next. "We were to assemble at a church in Los Angeles, where we would be loaded on buses and shuttled to the train yard for the trip to Manzanar, which we had heard was in the middle of a desert in eastern CA. A few casual onlookers peered over the overpass railing to catch a glimpse of our 'grand exit' from their city, but there were no flowers or speeches. We left the city as quietly and orderly as we had lived."
 * Evacuation Orders: **

There were ten permanent Internment camps: One of the most known Internment camps was Manzanar. “Manzanar was like a city except that there were armed guards on towers with machine guns and searchlights, barbed wire, and many rows of barracks.” The conditions were poor. There were ten people in a 12*20 room, and 250 people to 1 bathroom, which meant absolutely no privacy. Water was piped from an outside faucet. They had to make cupboards, benches, and stools from scrap lumber and apple crates. Tin can lids were used to cover knotholes in the floor to protect them from the wind. They slept on stiff canvas/straw mattresses. The Japanese were marched to a mess hall by guards, where their numbers were recorded. Guards searched their possessions; seizing anything they considered dangerous- kitchen knives, knitting needles, even hot plates for warming babies' milk. Each internee was issued a cot, an army blanket, and a sack to be filled with straw for a mattress; then families were assigned to a barrack according to size and number of children. Childless couples had to live in an open barrack, with only sheets hung up as partitions to separated them from strangers. "For these unfortunate people," Shi said, "this was very embarrassing and degrading.”
 * Internment Camps: **
 * Gila River **, Arizona: Aug '42-Nov '45: 13,400
 * Granada **, Colorado: Sept '42-Oct '45: 7,600: temps reached -30.
 * Heart Mountain **, Wyoming: Sept '42-Nov '45: 11,100
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Jerome, Arkansas **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">: Nov '42-June '44: 8,600: swamp lands where poisonous snakes live.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Manzanar **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, California: June '41-Nov '45: 10,200
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Minidoka **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, California: Sept. 42-Oct '45: 9,990
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Poston **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, Arizona: June '42-Nov '45: 18,000: average summer temperature was 110.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Rohwer **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, Arizona: Oct '42-Nov '45: 8,500: swampy lands where poisonous snakes live.
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Topaz **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, Utah: Oct '42-Oct '45
 * <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Tule Lake **<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">, California: June '42-Mar '46

<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Jobs: In the camp, a 40 hour-a-week job's salary was low: $8 a month for unskilled labor, $12 for skilled labor, and $16 for professionals (doctors, dentists.) The Japanese chose jobs according to their benefits. (Ex: mail driver gets to visit the mess halls and eat well, clerk for meat department gets to ride the meat truck into the nearby town and go shopping or even a movie.) Farming: Manzanar was practically a desert but because the Japanese were such good farmers, they were able to farm on the dry land. The Japanese were able to grow crops, making the camp self-sufficient. Manzanar also sold its’ crops to fellow camps. Education: Because the Japanese were so dedicated to education, they worked hard to create an education system for their children. Japanese volunteers organized the children into classes, Japanese made benches from scrap lumber for school, they even built nurseries, kindergartens, elementary schools, a high school, and an auditorium. <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Fred Korematsu worked as a shipyard welder in the San Francisco area when the war began, and he lost his job because his union expelled all members of Japanese ancestry. Korematsu wanted to remain with his Caucasian fiancée, and when the army posted exclusion orders in May 1942, he refused to report for evacuation. He altered his draft card and had minor plastic surgery to change his appearance, but he was arrested on a tip and his case brought to trial before U.S. district judge, Adolphus F. St. Sure in San Francisco. Korematsu was convicted of violating the exclusion order. His case initially went before the Supreme Court with those of Hirabayashi and Yasui but was returned to the Court for Appeals on a technical issue. By the time it got back to the Supreme Court, Allied victory over Japan seemed assured and doubts about the continued internment of Japanese Americans had increased. Four members of the Court at first voted to reserve Korematsu's conviction, and two others expressed reservations, but the Court's final decision upheld the conviction by a vote of six to three. The Internment camps ruled unconstitutional. More than 120,000 people, most American citizens, were forced by military order into relocation camps. The inmates spent an average of three years in the camps. The Japanese had committed no crime; they were guilty because their Japanese roots. 120,000 Japanese were forced into Internment camps, but only three men challenged the military curfews and exclusion orders.
 * <span style="color: #d2004d; font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Making a Life in Manzanar: **
 * <span style="color: #d2004d; font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Unconstitutional Event: **

<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> By 1946 all of the Japanese were released and allowed to return to their home, but now they had no home. The Japanese’s belongings had to be sold when the Evacuation Orders were announced, and the possessions that were left behind were stolen or destroyed. <span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">40% of the Issei survivors moved to the LA area. 20% of them live below the poverty level. Most have medical problems, housing problems, and problems accessing government services. The Japanese used to be members of tightly knit, self-sufficient families. The Japanese’s houses weren’t the only things that were changed for the worse. The Japanese’s morale was greatly lowered. They were disgraced. "Papa never said more than three or four sentences about his nine months at Fort Lincoln. Few men who spent time there will talk about it more than that. Not because of the physical hardships: he had been through worse times on fishing trips down the coast of Mexico. It was the charge of disloyalty. For a man raised in Japan, there was no greater disgrace. And it was the humiliation. It brought him face to face with his own vulnerability, his own powerlessness. He had no rights, no home, and no control over his own life. This kind of emasculation was suffered, in one form or another, by all the men interned at Manzanar." For a long time, survivors of the camps remained quiet about their camp experience but in the 1970s the shame and anger began to surface. In December 1982-February 1983 a report was made. It said that what the U.S. had done to the Japanese was a "grave injustice" and it offered $20,000 to all who remained.
 * <span style="color: #d2004d; font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Life After the Camps: **

<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> The Internment camps strayed so far from the constitution. The panic from Pearl Harbor and the overall reactions from World War II are labeled as the event’s contributors. Americans make a big deal about the European concentration camps in World War II even though there were Japanese internment camps in America. The truth is, yes, America did have Japanese camps but they let the Japanese make their own food, they never had any gas chambers, they never did medical experiments on the Japanese, and they tried not to split up families.
 * <span style="color: #d2004d; font-family: Calibri; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">America at Whole: **

media type="youtube" key="FYFqvxwdDlg" height="301" width="381" align="center"

<span style="color: #cd0535; font-family: Calibri,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 64px;">Sarah-Chen Ogorek