Japanese Internment
Alyssa Ortega
Mr. Manning
U.S. History Period 1
1/23/13
The bombing of Pearl Harbor, “a day that will leave in infamy.” Pearl Harbor was an attack on the United States Naval Base, located in Hawaii, made by the Japanese. This led to the wrongful and unjust internment of innocent Japanese Americans. Families were split and torn apart, business were let go, and homes were lost. All because “Americans” were afraid and made wrong judgments and let emotions play into their decisions. Americans believed that Japanese Americans were dangerous. For example a quote from Congressman Rankin states, “These Japs who had been here for generations were making signs, if you please, guiding the Japanese planes.” This implies that Japanese Americans were thought of as spies. This is a false belief based on racism because other statements by Rankin prove him to bias/racists and also there has never been evidence supporting that Japanese Americans worked as spies. Document number three states “a viper in nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched-so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents-grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.” The quote basically is telling the American People that Japanese Americans are still loyal to Japan and considered “Japanese” even though they are American. Which is in a sense hypocritical because our founding fathers were from England, immigrants themselves, but when they established this country they became Americans, nothing more nothing less. As you can see both these examples are undeniably wrong because they have no evidence to support them, they are just idiotic people who were scared after Pearl Harbor and thought internment was a perfect idea, but they did not realize what it did to those families and how it violated the constitution. Despite that, there were many people who believed Japanese Internment was wrong and unjust. For instance an anonymous letter states, “indiscriminate evaluation seems to me to be
Mr. Manning
U.S. History Period 1
1/23/13
The bombing of Pearl Harbor, “a day that will leave in infamy.” Pearl Harbor was an attack on the United States Naval Base, located in Hawaii, made by the Japanese. This led to the wrongful and unjust internment of innocent Japanese Americans. Families were split and torn apart, business were let go, and homes were lost. All because “Americans” were afraid and made wrong judgments and let emotions play into their decisions. Americans believed that Japanese Americans were dangerous. For example a quote from Congressman Rankin states, “These Japs who had been here for generations were making signs, if you please, guiding the Japanese planes.” This implies that Japanese Americans were thought of as spies. This is a false belief based on racism because other statements by Rankin prove him to bias/racists and also there has never been evidence supporting that Japanese Americans worked as spies. Document number three states “a viper in nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched-so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents-grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.” The quote basically is telling the American People that Japanese Americans are still loyal to Japan and considered “Japanese” even though they are American. Which is in a sense hypocritical because our founding fathers were from England, immigrants themselves, but when they established this country they became Americans, nothing more nothing less. As you can see both these examples are undeniably wrong because they have no evidence to support them, they are just idiotic people who were scared after Pearl Harbor and thought internment was a perfect idea, but they did not realize what it did to those families and how it violated the constitution. Despite that, there were many people who believed Japanese Internment was wrong and unjust. For instance an anonymous letter states, “indiscriminate evaluation seems to me to be