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Japanese Internment Camps

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Japanese Internment Camps
Japanese Internment Camp Essay

Japanese Internment Camps were unconstitutional because of the lack of evidence against the Japanese American people and the mistreatment of their American citizenship. The Japanese Internment Camps were created after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack left all Americans on high alert and all Japanese Americans were considered a security risk. In February of 1942, President Roosevelt signed an executive order, which relocated all Japanese Americans on the west coast to concentration camps. In every Japanese neighborhood, evacuation orders were posted. Families were forced to leave their homes and belongings, children were forced to leave their friends and school, and some families were even split apart. These innocent people were being treated like enemies instead of United States citizens. I believe that relocating families to internment camps was a poor decision on the American government’s part. The United States Constitution clearly states, in the Fifth Amendment, that every person is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty according to law. I understand that the attack on Pearl Harbor was an attack on the United States as a whole, so technically anyone could be behind it, but I disagree with punishing the entire Japanese American population just because they have Japanese ancestors. The United States government had no concrete evidence to prove that the Japanese American population was involved in the attack. If they had a very specific reason to prosecute a concentrated group, then I believe they should have relocated that concentrated group and not the entire population. Uprooting entire communities and relocating them to isolated camps is a blatant mistreatment of the rights of American citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly states that once you become an American citizen, you stay an American citizen and are treated like one. The Japanese Americans being forced to live in camps were not being

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