Ca History Japanese Internment

Caleb Forbes

California History

March 18th 2016

The bombing of pearl harbor threw the US into a state of panic and created a knee jerk reaction to uproot any Japanese person and move them to an internment camp. Both this book and Farewell to Manzanar follow a family of Japanese Americans that were forcefully uprooted by scared Americans and forced into internment camps in the middle of nowhere, in placed like Utah IE the desert. Many white Americans also assumed that any Japanese person might be an enemy of the state sent to spy on the US even though most of the Japanese people in America were second generation, or Nisei, and had never seen japan(p53). The book paints a portrait of racism perpetrated by everyone from the other people in her school to the government at large towards Japanese Americans. Uchida conveys the burden of having to ask questions like “Do you cut Japanese hair?” and can we come swim in the pool? We’re Japanese.” (p41) “Overriding the concern voiced by the attorney general and the justice department, they made the decision to forcibly evict all West Coast Japanese under the guise of ‘military necessity’” The Japanese people were literally uprooted at this time and forced out of their homes and businesses. While they were in the prison camps they obviously could not run their family businesses and were forced to live in makeshift camps for years. That was extremely disruptive to any life that could be considered normal.  

        Social injustices like this really make my blood boil. Especially as they were carried out by our own government against our own people due to fear mongering. One thing in particular that bugged me about this is that there were studies done that stated that the Japanese Americans were extremely loyal to the US, not to japan.  In another book, Farewell to Manzanar, there was a quote that I really liked that I think aptly summed up the feeling that many first generation Japanese had towards the war: “When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?’’(Houston CH7)  I had read Farewell to Manzanar in the past and both of these books paint a similar and depressing picture of the internment of the Japanese people in large prison camps during the war. The violence that could sometimes break out and the terrible conditions of the camps are something that stuck in my mind.