Jose Cruz
History 17B
Mrs. Delano
11/20/12
The Internment Camps
The Japanese Internment Camps that were placed in the United States in the year of 1942 to secure Japanese Americans from doing harm to the nation. During my research there were different things that really got me interested in this topic such as treatment, where were they placed, and how they work. This camps were first made because the Japanese army attacked pearl harbor and this woke up the nation that they weren’t really protected they started building camps to put all Japanese to secure the nation from another internal attack that they thought the Japanese were going to make. All the people that lived most in the West Coast of the United States were being held in internment camps, also other Japanese that lived in Hawaii were also being held to secure power plants and the nation from being destroyed. The camps that held the Japanese had a maximum capacity of 1,500 and more than 1,800 were interned into the camps. Even though some Japanese were American citizens they were still interned into the camps this caused a lot of controversy because some of them didn’t really a lot of Japanese background but for the fact that their looks they were interned this caused that most of the world started thinking again about racial discrimination that had already happen in Nazi against the Jewish people. The camps were developed based on the Nazi camps against the Jewish they had the same format but the only difference was that they weren’t planning of exterminating them but other than that they had them working and also they had them building their own “hell” because that’s how it felt when you were inside the camps, this same thing happen to the Jewish but it was more harmful because they were being exterminated and they were treated more severely than the Japanese. This was really discriminating towards both races the Jewish and the Japanese because they were treated like animals or worst. This made a big impact on both races because this didn’t only affect the people that lived through time but also their decedents because they fear that this might happen to them again because people always fear of their past. The United States internment camps were all set up to protect the nation from another attack from the Japanese but some Japanese American citizens were also interned this meant that racial discrimination was on the rise which was not only on the Japanese but also on other races that were minority at that time I believe that if other race meant harm to the United States they were going to have them interned too because they wanted didn’t seem to like how the minority was rising at that time, they also forgot that they were the ones that helped them build the rail road and also to help the economy rise.( Inside America's Concentration Camps: Two Centuries of Internment and Torture) The building of the railroad made a big difference on helping the United States economy to rise this and after one attack they forget that they were attacked by what they also were their enemies and that’s why it was the reason to move to America to have a better life conditions. The way that America acted on the Japanese was a little harm which put them as the bad guy with power that takes advantage of the minority like the Nazi did towards the Jewish which made a big impact on the nation at that time. The Japanese seem to not know what their people had done to the United States and now their country. The Internment camps started getting overfilled with many Japanese on the first days that the president gave the order to gather them into the camps. (Inside America's Concentration Camps: Two Centuries of Internment and Torture)
President Roosevelt authorized these camps with the Executive Order of 9066 this was issued on February 19, 1942, this started with the deploy of military commanders to search all areas for the Japanese this were so called “Exclusion Zones” which they