American Homefront During WWII: Relocation of Japanese Americans

On December 7th, 1941, a  United States naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japan. Two months after this on February 19th, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order that called for relocation of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast (also known as Executive Order 9066).

This is an interesting article:
http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/jarda/historical-context.html

This article brings up interesting points about the subject. Below is an excerpt summarizing the camps:



"From March 1942 to 1946, the US War Relocation Authority (WRA) had jurisdiction over the Japanese and Japanese Americans evacuated from their homes in California, Oregon, and Washington. It administered the extensive resettlement program, and oversaw the details of the registration and segregation programs.
"
Evacuated" families left behind homes, businesses, pets, land, and most of their belongings. Taking only what they could carry, Japanese Americans were taken by bus and train to assembly centers — hastily converted facilities such as race tracks and fairgrounds. Here they awaited reassignment to the "relocation camps."

The WRA controlled the administration of 10 camps in remote areas of California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Texas, and Arkansas. Although official government photographs were careful not to show it, these facilities were fenced with barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers.
During internment (also called incarceration), families worked, studied, and lived their lives in the barracks-like living quarters of the relocation centers, which were alternately labeled "relocation camps," "concentration camps," or "evacuation centers." These camps, some of which housed approximately 8,000 people, functioned as communities. The government provided medical care, schools, and food, and adults often held camp jobs — in food service, agriculture, medical clinics, as teachers, and other jobs required for daily life."

The article also brings up a fact about how the order was vague on ethnicity, because America was fighting on 3 fronts, however it was used to incarcerate the thousands of Japanese Americans.

Another interesting point is that the government said the incarceration was to "protect" the Japanese from racism as repercussion from the Pearl Harbor attack, however, the Commission of Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in the 1980's proved otherwise stating that false.

The Japanese Americans were loyal civilians and the order is really unconstitutional. If you are interested in reading the Executive Order 9066 written by Franklin D. Roosevelt, below is the link to it.

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=true&page=transcript&doc=74&title=Transcript+of+Executive+Order+9066:++Resulting+in+the+Relocation+of+Japanese+%281942%29

These Japanese Americans lost most of their liberties, and had to rebuild their lives. This order proves itself to be an example of racial profiling and fear. This can be connected to modern day, more specifically the attacks on 9/11. Middle Eastern and Muslim people were and still are greatly profiled.

I have to agree with a good quote by Judge Mills Lane "I think racial profiling is wrong. It cannot be defended. It's just flat wrong. And if a matter came before me, and it could be established that the arrest was made strictly on racial profiling, when I was on the bench, it would be gone."

I think when you have fear and misinformation (the media is a great source of this) it's the perfect combination for bias.