The Use of Internment Camps in World War II
The Use of Internment Camps in World War II
Our country was founded on the principals that all people are created equal. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights clearly define the rights of people living in our country. There have been periods in our country’s history when we have blatantly disregarded the Constitution and jeopardized the integrity of the Constitution itself. For the first hundred or so years of our country’s existence our economy and survival for that matter depended on the work of slaves, African slaves. We treated an entire group of people as though they were animals though our Constitution states that all men are created equal. In the 1940’s our government invoked activities that were by all means unconstitutional and unjust. Early during World War II, there were roughly 45,000 50,000 Japanese citizens, and about 70,0001 United States born descendants, virtually all children, living on the United State’s West Coast. They were forcefully taken from their homes and most were taken to relocation or internment camps. The vast majority of these imprisoned people had no reason to be to be seen as guilty, or even suspicious, the sole reason they were taken on was their ethnicity. Entire families were taken from their homes without even a chance to gather their belongings. The internment has become one of the most widely condemned actions in US history. There is no viable justification and was another United States strike against their own Constitution.
At dawn on December 7, 1941 the sun rose and bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Japanese aircraft launched a surprise attack on the United States’ Pacific Fleet. Over 3,500 Americans were killed or wounded, two battleships were destroyed, four others were sunk, and 149 American airplanes were destroyed. That night President Franklin D. Roosevelt began making the necessary moves to declare war. The declaration of war easily passed and the United States headed into the war, against the Axis Powers, on December 11. Ten weeks following the declaration of war, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 90066, which gave the Secretary of War and military commanders the power to exclude people from designated areas. The President’s “official” objective of signing the Executive Order 90066 was to avoid national security espionage. There were also other objectives in the mind of the President and his Cabinet though. ...