Left image from: http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/japanese-internment-camp-3.jpg; Middle image from: http://images.betterworldbooks.com/076/The-Tragic-History-of-the-Japanese-American-Internment-Camps-9780766027978.jpg; Right image from: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tJ4O30Q9szo/UHS2OOTlKgI/AAAAAAAAACU/yYX9TVKEfeg/s1600/MAP+ON+INTERNMENT+CAMP.jpg
What are internment camps?
You may have heard of the concentration camps in Germany during the time Adolph Hitler was a dictator, but do you know there were camps right here in the United States that were similar to these camps? These camps were called “internment camps.” They were not as severe as the death camps that were run by the Nazis, but living in these camps placed severe limitations on the freedoms of the Japanese-Americans (Fremon, 1996).
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl
Harbor, a United States naval base in Honolulu, Hawaii. One day later, Congress
declared war on Japan. After months of debating the threat posed by Japanese people living in the U.S., it was decided that the Japanese people would be relocated to internment camps (Fremon, 1996). An internment camp is a prison camp for prisoners of war (dictionary.com). Japanese internment camps refer specifically to the camps created in the United States in1942 to house Japanese people that the government thought were a threat.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans became extremely suspicious of all Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens. They believed there were Japanese spies that were seeking to sabotage the U.S. and it's attempts to fight in the war (Fremon,1996). It was hard to know who was a spy, so all Japanese became suspects (Japanese-American Interment, n.d.). This fear contributed to the creation of internment camps. February 19, 1941, the Executive Order 9066 called for the creation of interment camps and the relocation of the Japanese to these camps. The Japanese people were forced to evacuate from their homes, sell everything they owned, and move to internment camps (Fremon,1996). Ten internment camps were established in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado and Arkansas, eventually holding over 120,000 persons. The internment camps were meant to be evacuation camps where the Japanese-Americans could send their children to schools, perform work, and maintain some self-respect. Some agreed to go quietly but most were forced to leave (Fremon,1996). The map on the left shows the locations of the internment camps. In addition to the internment camps, there were certain areas where Japanese people were not allowed to go. The government feared that they would spy on the movements of the naval bases or air fields along the coast and so the Japanese were moved primarily out of the military area (highlighted in pink on the map) (Japanese American relocation, n.d.). Map image from: http://lochgarry.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/divi584.jpg |