Japanese Internment & the Use of Propaganda

Japanese Internment On December 7th, 1941 Japan executed a surprise attack on an American naval base at Pearl Harbor, HI. The attack caught America by surprise and ended with the death of over 2,000 Americans most of them sailors in the Navy. The attack almost crippled the entire western navy fleet. The following day President Roosevelt declared war on Japan.

Japanese Internment In the following months there were occasional attacks by the Japanese on the west coast of the U.S. Oil refineries were blown up, and on at least one occasion a shell was fired into a California city street. Many Americans especially on the west coast became fearful that a full scale Japanese attack would be coming.

Japanese Internment Many Americans started to produce propaganda that made the Japanese look worse than they really were. In turn this made many Americans start to dislike Japanese and Japanese- Americans There are also false reports of Japanese attacks that add to the hysteria. With the growing dislike of the Japanese, many Americans were calling for the government to do something that would protect the country.

Japanese Internment Finally in Feb. 1942 FDR signs Executive Order 9066 that detains all Japanese- Americans in the western United States. Japanese- Americans are rounded up throughout the west and forced to several different camps around the country. Many lose their jobs, homes and sometimes their families, which not all Americans agreed with. In many cases they would never reclaim these things again. The biggest of these camps was Manzanar in CA. The U.S. Government produced videos to justify relocating Japanese- American citizens.

Japanese Internment These camps weren’t as bad as concentration camps but the people were held against their will. The government would release pictures of Japanese- Americans in the camps to show how “good” life was, which kept most Americans happy. The detention of Japanese- Americans made its way to the Supreme Court where they ruled that people could be held based only on their nation ancestry even if they were citizens. Most Americans at the time accepted this, but would be later deemed unconstitutional. The U.S. govt. apologized officially in 1992.