Racial Profiling or Military Necessity
Racial Profiling or Military Necessity?
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan” -Franklin D Roosevelt; Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, kicking off the fight for WWII. Yet while Military forces of Japan and the United States fought in the Pacific, there was a fight happening on the U.S. Pacific coast between American-Japanese citizens and aliens versus American citizens. Over one hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry were confined to internment camps, of these approximately two-thirds were U.S. Citizens. With the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in early December, it caused the United States to dive into war. This quickly led American people to believe that there was treachery about with the Japanese. Along with this fear, there was doubt of the loyalty of those Japanese-Americans that were currently living on the west coast. President Franklin D Roosevelt signed an order in February 1942 stating that U.S. Military was allowed to exclude any and all persons from certain areas of the U.S. as necessary. This removed any Americans with Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, placing them under armed guard, otherwise known as internment camps for up to four years. The Military justified their actions for these internment camps by claiming that there was a danger of those Japanese descent spying for their country. The U.S. Military used the threat to the American people as their justification for the internment camps, but the Executive Order 9066, the order that Franklin D Roosevelt signed in 1942, was used as the Constitutional Justifications for creating the internment camps. A few years later there was a law passed by the government making it possible for an internee to renounce their American citizenship. Of the many Japanese that were kept in
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan” -Franklin D Roosevelt; Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation On December 7th, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, kicking off the fight for WWII. Yet while Military forces of Japan and the United States fought in the Pacific, there was a fight happening on the U.S. Pacific coast between American-Japanese citizens and aliens versus American citizens. Over one hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry were confined to internment camps, of these approximately two-thirds were U.S. Citizens. With the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in early December, it caused the United States to dive into war. This quickly led American people to believe that there was treachery about with the Japanese. Along with this fear, there was doubt of the loyalty of those Japanese-Americans that were currently living on the west coast. President Franklin D Roosevelt signed an order in February 1942 stating that U.S. Military was allowed to exclude any and all persons from certain areas of the U.S. as necessary. This removed any Americans with Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, placing them under armed guard, otherwise known as internment camps for up to four years. The Military justified their actions for these internment camps by claiming that there was a danger of those Japanese descent spying for their country. The U.S. Military used the threat to the American people as their justification for the internment camps, but the Executive Order 9066, the order that Franklin D Roosevelt signed in 1942, was used as the Constitutional Justifications for creating the internment camps. A few years later there was a law passed by the government making it possible for an internee to renounce their American citizenship. Of the many Japanese that were kept in