Rights of the Japanese-Americans
The Japanese-Americans that were forced into internment camps had rights and should not have been relocated. More than sixty percent of the Japanese-Americans were citizens of the United States, so they had the rights that the Constitution gives every citizen. Those rights included the right to not be forced to move from where you are living to an internment camp, and that is exactly what happened to over 110,000 Japanese-Americans. They also had the rights to proper medical care, education, living conditions, and to be paid minimum wage. All of these rights were taken away from Japanese-Americans in the internment camps. They were relocated mainly because of our government's prejudice against them after the Pearl Harbor attack. The government was also pressured to relocate Japanese-Americans by the public's fear of Japanese-Americans rebelling. When most Americans saw a Japanese-American after the Pearl Harbor attack, they thought of the Americans that were killed by the Japanese on December 7, 1942. They thought that every Japanese-American was a spy, traitor, or rebel and the government agreed with them, even if the Japanese-Americans were loyal and devoted to the United States. Over 2,000 Japanese-Americans were even in the military while they were in the internment camps. The government was pressured to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps by politicians, too. Most Japanese-Americans were farmers that competed with other agricultural groups. As a result, local politicians disliked the presence of Japanese-Americans and used the Pearl Harbor attack as an excuse. In an investigation of the internment of Japanese-Americans, it was deduced that Japanese-American internment was a "grave injustice" and happened because of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." This statement was released thirty-five years after the last internment camp was closed. It shouldn't have taken that long for the government to admit that what they did was wrong.
"Their parents, most of whom are American citizens, and their grandparents, who are aliens, immediately wanted to go to work. At Manzanar, they built a lab-house and began rooting guayule cuttings. The plants, when mature, will add to our rubber supply. At Parker, they undertook the irrigation of fertile desert lands. Meanwhile, in areas away from the coast and under appropriate safeguards, many were permitted to enter private employment, particularly to work in sugar beet fields where labor was badly needed."
"As far as I'm concerned, I was born here, and according to the Constitution that I studied in school, that I had the Bill of Rights that should have backed me up. And until the very minute I got on to the evacuation train, I says, 'It can't be.' I says, 'How can they to that to an American citizen?'"
-Robert Kashiwagi
"Now they were taken to race tracks and fairgrounds where the army, almost overnight, had built assembly centers. They lived here until new pioneer communities could be completed on federally owned lands in the interior. Santa Nita race track, for example, suddenly became a community of about 17,000 persons. The army provided housing and plenty of healthful, nourishing food for all. The residents of the new communities set about developing a way of life as nearly normal as possible. They held church services: Protestant, Catholic, and Buddhist. They each had their own newspaper, organized nursery schools, and some made camouflage nets for the United States army."
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