farewell to manzanar
In spring of 1942, immediately after the United States entered war with Japan, the Federal government instructed a policy where hundreds of thousands of people of Japanese ancestry were evacuated into relocation camps. Many agree that the United States government was not justified with their treatment towards the Japanese during World War II. This Japanese-American experience of incarceration is believed to be unconstitutional, demonstrating racism and causing social and economic hardships for the evacuees. The location of one of the camps in California, Manzanar, "was representative of the atmosphere of racial prejudice, mistrust, and fear, that resulted in American citizens being uprooted from their homes, denied their constitutional rights, and with neither accusation, indictment, nor conviction, moved to remote relocation camps for most of the duration of the war" (Daniels et al., 1986, p.148). As the Japanese people were being removed from the West Coast, it was obvious that some economic loss would occur. "In a movement of this kind...it was probably inevitable that some mistakes would be made and that some people would suffer" (qtd. In
This resentment led to the myth of "yellow peril" (Klimova). It is revealed that "not the military necessity but primarily racial prejudice provoked such unprecedentedly drastic measures, indiscriminately applied to the whole national group" (Klimova). According to this myth, "the supreme mission of Japanese Americans was to establish ascendance over the whites by driving them first, out of business, and then, out of country" (Klimova). To relocate some one hundred thousand alien and American-born Japanese, to expose them to threats and violence, and to involve them beatings and murder cannot be excused or justified. Similarly, Japanese immigrants, "pursuant to Federal law and despite long residence in the United States" (Smith, 1995, p. 5), were excluded, removed, and detained by the United States. On February 19, 1942, ten weeks after the Pearl Harbor tragedy, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the exclusion of all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States and relocating them into concentration camps. Ineligibility to citizenship was a constant reminder of another form of racial prejudice of the dominant group. In addition, it was unconstitutional to evacuate only citizens of Japanese descent.
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