Japanese American Internment Camps

Between 1942 and 1945, thousands of Japanese Americans, regardless of United States citizenship status, received orders to evacuate their homes and businesses. Sparked by rising fear and anxiety of the American people after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a United States Naval base in Hawaii, the U.S. government relocated Japanese Americans to remote areas on the West Coast and in the south, isolating them in internment or relocation camps. With no actual evidence supporting the creation of internment camps, the U.S. forced Japanese Americans into camps because of Japanese involvement in Pearl Harbor leading to a rise in anti-Japanese paranoia sparked by economic success of Japanese-Americans, fear and prejudice erupting within the United States …show more content…
The tone of the executive order was carefully neutral, with no specific reference to the Japanese. The order allowed the War Department to designate “military areas,” excluding anyone from them whom it felt to be a danger. The original order prescribed neither what should happen to the evacuees nor excluded voluntary withdrawal. However, the specific target of the order was the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans living along the West Coast, calling for their forced relocation into internment camps. While the U.S. government locked up thousands of German and Italian aliens, they remained free to live their lived, furthering proving the heightened fear, anxiety, and paranoia toward the Japanese Americans. Daniel Inouye, 17-year-old son of a Japanese immigrant and Red Cross volunteered observed a great amount of Americans fear and prejudice toward Japanese Americans stating, “It took no great effort of imagination to see the hatred many Americans had for the enemy and turned on us, who looked so much like the enemy but in no way supported