Signature Assignment 1 Topaz

Jeff Klc INTL 2040 Signature Assignment: Topaz Is it right to imprison U.S citizens merely because of the skin color and culture? President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorizes the Secretary Of War to prescribe Military Areas, which actually were internment camps for the Japanese and Japanese-American people. One of which was located in Utah and was known as Topaz. Still to this day there are people who felt the actions of the U.S. Government was constitutional. There are also family members and stories of what truly happened that would show you otherwise. In order to understand the reasoning why the United States would react in such a way it is important to understand the history and what the Unites States was experiencing. On December 7, 1941 The Japanese Empire bombed the United States. On thing to understand with the bombing of Pearl Harbor is the fact that it completely caught the United States off guard. The United States at this point was staying out of World War II, however entered the war the very next day. The Japanese killed over two thousand Americans with this attack and over one thousand of Americans were wounded. America was in shock and needed to take action towards the Japanese. The United States knew a lot of Japanese-Americans lived on the west coat of the Unites States. Since Pearl Harbor didn’t know what the Japanese had planned and many argue that idea of Japanese spies or a Japanese uprising on the west coast was a definite possibility. In 1943 Gordon Hirabayashi who was studying at The University of Washington and was convicted violating a curfew with the relocation order. This was one of two instances where the interment camps and relocation orders were tested constitutionally. In this case Hirabayashi felt the discrimination and power delegated to the military was in

Jeff Klc INTL 2040 violation of the Fifth Amendment. The court found the President’s orders to be constitutional and viewed the curfew to be a “protective measure”. It was said in the case file, “in time of war residents having ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy may be a greater source of danger than those of a different ancestry.” Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American who was living in San Leandroa at the time or the relocations. He chose to stay in his home instead of relocating which resulted him getting arrested. Korematsu felt these evacuations and relocations violated the Fifth Amendment. This resulted in the Supreme Court case Korematsu verse the United States in 1944. The Supreme Court ruled with a six to three vote that the evacuation order was valid. In the case file it states that Justice Frankfurter concurred, writing that the “martial necessity arising from the danger of espionage and sabotage” warranted the military’s evacuation order. The uncertainty of what the Japanese planned next and the United States in a state of shock lead to the terrible decisions of the internment camps. Both of these men had proper arguments and felt their fifth amendment was being violated however as terrible as it is the Supreme Court deemed the acts constitutional. At the time of World War II the American people knew the Japanese as the enemy. They knew them as the empire colluding with the Nazi realm and in times of war they needed to be stopped. Living in the present day it is easy to see how terrible the actions towards the Japanese people. When one understands what America was experiencing with War then it is easier to understand why the President made the decisions he did. Milton Bennett talks about the experience of difference in his model of Intercultural Sensitivity. One aspect of this model is Defense, which is what America was facing at this time. His model states

Jeff Klc INTL 2040 “people at Defense are threatened by cultural differences so they tend to be highly critical of other cultures and apt to blame cultural difference for general ills of society”. It is very interesting that in 1976 decades after the war, President Ford signed an order “prohibiting the executive branch from reinstituting the notorious and tragic World War II order”. The U.S. Government is now realizing what they had done was terrible and didn’t want it to happen again. In 1988 President Reagan apologized publicly for former internees and their descendants. The people who suffered in the internment camps had to wait over forty years for an apology from the U.S Government. After understanding the stories of the camps it is uncertain whether or not anyone will truly forgive the Unites States. The Japanese internment camp in Topaz interned 11,212 Japanese-Americans over the course of World War II with a peak population of 8,300. The internees were hired to install sheetrock and barbed wire fences, so they in a sense were building their own prison. “Furniture for the apartments included only army cots, mattresses, and blankets. Some residents constructed tables, chairs and shelves out of scrap lumber left lying around the camp”. For three years the Japanese-American people lived in close quarters only able to leave the camp if they had a job. Eventually this impacted the internees living in the camp. These people were once American citizens and now they are treated like prisoners. Toyo Suyemoto wrote the following regarding her experience in the camp. “The women’s side of the latrine was segmented into two compartments. One long room had washbasins lined up along the wall, and towards the back, a double-faced row of toilet stalls. The other room was cut up into door less bath and shower cubicles. The lack of

Jeff Klc INTL 2040 privacy still troubled us.” This is one of many examples of how they were treated like prison inmates. At the close of the camps many of these people had hard time regaining work and regaining a sense of purpose, which led to a high rise in suicides, which is similar to what we see with people coming out of prison. The Japanese American citizens were treated as if they were less then any other citizens in the United States. America is known for the land of the free and this was not the case with these internment camps. It is sad to know that we threw American professors, students, businessmen, doctors and much more into camps to live in poor conditions. America knows what they did was wrong but no apology can heal the mental and physical wounds of the Japanese- American people. It will always be a part of their culture and history. The way the Japanese-Americans were treated during World War II was disturbing and America realized that. America may have apologized from their actions regarding discrimination towards Japanese-Americans, but that hasn’t sealed the wounds. It hard to look at a public apology as valid when some of our leaders want to build a wall and create travel bans. The Military Commissions act allows for non-citizens to be arrested and held for as long as thee government wants without the ability to appeal. When time of war happens America has a tendency of looking at the entire culture as enemies. Unfortunately it takes too much time to realize all those we thought wer guilty are in fact innocent.

Jeff Klc INTL 2040 Works Cited "Korematsu v. United States." Oyez, 3 Apr. 2019, www.oyez.org/cases/19401955/323us214. "Hirabayashi v. United States." Oyez, 3 Apr. 2019, www.oyez.org/cases/19401955/320us81. “FDR Orders Japanese Americans into Internment Camps.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-signsexecutive-order-9066. Suyemoto, Toyo, and Susan B. Richardson. I Call to Remembrance : Toyo Suyemoto’s Years of Internment. Rutgers University Press, 2007. “Topaz Camp.” Topaz Camp | Topaz Museum Foundation, 9 Aug. 2012, www.topazmuseum.org/topaz-camp.