2. Japanese American Internment Camps

3. Japanese Internment Camps
On your page titled
”Japanese Internment Camps”,
write the answers to the 6 questions asked on the slides that follow.
Restate questions in your answers in complete sentences.
Use the primary resources
you see on the slides to help
you answer the questions.

4. Question #1
What caused the United States to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camp?

5. -Franklin Delanor Roosevelt
Executive Order 9066
“From which any or all persons, Japanese or Japanese American descent may be excluded."
-Franklin Delanor Roosevelt
The United States government removed Japanese-Americans from the west coast, relocated them to detention camps, and established curfews.

6. Executive Order 9066
Read Executive Order Question #2 According to the order, what was the reason the president gave for relocating Japanese Americans? Question #3 What other groups of people were relocated along with Japanese Americans?

7. Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were nisei (literal translation: "second age"; Japanese people born in the United States and holding American citizenship) and sansei (literal translation: "third age"; the sons or daughters of nisei). The rest were issei (literal translation: "first age"; immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship).

8. Question #4 Review the next few slides and briefly explain where Japanese Americans were held?
There were three types of camps. Civilian Assembly Centers were temporary camps, frequently located at horse tracks, where the Nisei were sent as they were removed from their communities. Eventually, most were sent to Relocation Centers, also known as internment camps. Detention camps housed Nikkei considered to be disruptive or of special interest to the government.
Civilian Assembly Centers (18)
Relocation Centers (10)
Justice Department Detention camps (8)
Citizen Isolation Centers (3)
Federal Bureau of Prisons (3)
U.S. Army Facilities (18)

10. War Relocation Authority (WRA) Centers
Name
State
Opened
Max. Pop'n
Manzanar
California
March 1942
10,046
Tule Lake
May 1942
18,789
Poston
Arizona
17,814
Gila River
July 1942
13,348
Granada
Colorado
August 1942
7,318
Heart Mountain
Wyoming
10,767
Minidoka
Idaho
9,397
Topaz
Utah
September 1942
8,130
Rohwer
Arkansas
8,475
Jerome
October 1942
8,497

11. Questions #5 Review the next few slides and describe the living conditions inside of the internment camps.
Estelle Ishigo was a European American sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Camp due to her husband's Japanese heritage. She depicted her observations and experiences in the relocation camp through watercolor paintings and black and white sketches. "Home" provides insight into the living conditions of people living in barracks in the relocation camp. Estelle Ishigo watercolor painting, "Home," Heart Mountain, December Box 719. Estelle Ishigo Papers (Collection Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

12. - Shigeru Yabu, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation
“During the winter, our wet hair became frozen, and our fingers would stick to the metal door knob because we had to walk outdoors back to our barracks [after a shower].”
- Shigeru Yabu, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation

13. “Panorama of Amache, Colorado”
“From 1942 to 1946, home for most Japanese Americans was one of 10 WRA camps, all patterned on military facilities. Hastily built, with tarpaper walls and no amenities, the barracks were hot in summer and cold in winter. Most did not meet minimal standards for military housing. A visiting judge noted that prisoners in federal penitentiaries were better housed.”

14. “High School Football Game”
"Sports were real important. We'd get up and play basketball, baseball. I was on the basketball team and I helped coach football. I remember we had to buy our own baseballs and basketballs from Sears, and our own uniforms and set up our own league. We had championship playoffs. It's funny, but I think sports were one of the key factors that kept people from going astray, or feeling dissatisfied in camp. If it weren't for those athletic leagues, I think there would have been much more dissension."
Jack Matsuoka, in Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps

15. We saw all these people behind the fence, looking out, hanging onto the wire, and looking out because they were anxious to know who was coming in. But I will never forget the shocking feeling that human beings were behind this fence like animals [crying]. And we were going to also lose our freedom and walk inside of that gate and find ourselves…cooped up there…when the gates were shut, we knew that we had lost something that was very precious; that we were no longer free."
Mary Tsukamoto

16. -Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar
“Boy Scouts Carrying Flag”
"In most ways it was a totally equipped American small town, complete with schools, churches, Boy Scouts, beauty parlors, neighborhood gossip, fire and police departments, glee clubs, softball leagues, Abbott and Costello movies, tennis courts, and traveling shows."
-Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar

17. Be Like the Cactus My Plea
Let not harsh tongues, that wag in vain, Discourage you. In spite of pain, Be like the cactus, which through rain, And storm, and thunder, can remain.
Kimii Nagata
My Plea
Oh God, I pray that I may bear a cross To set my people free, That I may help to take good-will across An understanding sea.
Oh, God, I pray that someday every race May stand on equal plane And prejudice will find no dwelling place In a peace that all may gain.
Mary Matsuzawa

18. Apologies and Reparations
Question #6 Review the next 5 slides and write your FEELINGS about the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

19. In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to study the matter. On February 24, 1983, the commission issued a report entitled Personal Justice Denied, condemning the internment as "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity". The Commission recommended that $20,000 in reparations be paid to those Japanese Americans who had been victims of internment (totaling $1.2 billion).

20. “Congress recognizes that, as described in the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II.”
Civil Liberties Act of 1988

21. Civil Liberties Act of 1988
acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of United States citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II;
apologize on behalf of the people of the United States for the evacuation, relocation, and internment of such citizens and permanent resident aliens;
provide for a public education fund to finance efforts to inform the public about the internment of such individuals so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event;
make restitution to those individuals of Japanese ancestry who were interned;
discourage the occurrence of similar injustices and violations of civil liberties in the future; and
make more credible and sincere any declaration of concern by the United States over violations of human rights committed by other nations.

23. U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans.
On September 27, 1992, the Civil Liberties Act Amendments of 1992, appropriating an additional $400 million to ensure all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government.

24. STOP HERE!

25. Kenji by Fort Minor watch the videos

26. War Activities Committee U.S. government Propaganda

27. Emotionally, politically and racially charged, the issue of the Japanese American Relocation during World War II is an event that just won't go away. Claims have been made that American citizens were imprisoned against their will in concentration camps, and that the entire fiasco was motivated by war time hysteria, racial bigotry, and opportunistic businesses that wanted to snap up property left behind by the evacuees.
Counter claims have suggested that there was complete documented evidence to justify an evacuation of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals from the west coast of the United States, and that no American citizen was detained against their will by their own government.