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... is when the Western Defense Command was actually set up. To get an idea of the size of the W. D. C. imagine a line splitting California, Oregon and Washington in half; the western half of those states would be the W.
D. C. and would eventually be devoid of anyone of Japanese descent. Southern Arizona was also included in the W. D. C.
Now the internment didnt happen all at once. It happened in a series of proclamations, each taking more rights of the Japanese away once it was put in to action. Proclamation three was the first which directly violated the rights of most Japanese Americans (Daniels 53). It called for an 8 a. m. to 6 p.
m. curfew for every person of Japanese descent in the W. D. C. During the day they were restricted to their place of employment or not more than five miles of their residence. It was Civilian Exclusion Order no. 5 that forced all Japanese people in most parts of the Western Defense Command to leave their homes and go to government buildings where they were transported to relocation centers.
An issue must be cleared up here though. Not all Japanese people were interned for the duration of the war. Most of them were relocated to places in the interior of the country although they did spend a long time in the relocation camps. The Japanese who were considered subversives those who did not answer yes to the loyalty questions and those who were illegal aliens were all kept for the duration of the war. The loyalty questions were administered to all people with the potential for relocation and were: 1. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered? 2.
Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization? (Spicer 143) Those who answered no to either question were interned for the duration of the war and after their forced evacuation to relocation camps, many Japanese Americans did answer no. Why did all Japanese Americans inside the W. D. C.
get interned and not the Italians or Germans? Only a few of these two groups who were considered subversive or enemy aliens were interned. Most of them however were not interned. There was a lot of controversy over this in the military but the reason is fairly simple. If the military was to intern all alien Italians and Germans they would have had to intern Joe DiMaggios father.
Now Joe DiMaggio was one of the biggest most popular sports figures at the tine and to intern his father would have created a back lash that was not felt after the internment of the Japanese. Quite simply, the military could get away with interning the Japanese in America, not the Italians. As for the Germans, the military thought that with Germans you can tell who is bad or disloyal just by observing them; something that seems ambiguous since there are no black and white differences between loyal and disloyal. Also, The evil deeds of Hitlers Germany were the deeds of bad men; the evil deeds of Tojo and Hirohitos Japan were the deeds of bad race (Daniels 2, 34) Because Germans are white, there are some good ones, but because the Japanese are not white there are no good ones. Isnt this what the above passage is saying. There was no difference between the imperial strength of Germany and the imperial strength of Japan at the time except the color of the people.
Why were the Japanese interned? Was it because of military necessity, the public outcry for their internment, the lobbying of various politicians and pressure groups, or was it prejudice? This paper contends that racism caused the Japanese in America to be interned. The other more popular theories are the Military Necessity theory, the Pressure Group theory and the Politician theory. We will see that none of these theories hold true under scrutiny. The military necessity theory is probably the most widely know and most often preferred to be true.
This theory is self-explanatory. Its the theory that the Japanese were interned because they were a threat to national security. This just isnt true. Numerous reports made by military and F. B. I.
officials state that the Japanese did not have the military capability to invade the west coast and there was absolutely no proof of sabotage going on anywhere. On the very day the president signed order 9066 a report made by a general staff officer stated that mass evacuation was unnecessary (Daniels 47). Numerous other reports were submitted before the day order 9066 was signed but none of them were heeded. Why? Because the people that made the decision to intern the Japanese let their racist fears control them. The second most widely held theory is the Pressure Group theory.
This theory holds that influential civilian groups such as the American Legion and many labor organizations lobbied for the Japanese internment because of economic motives. It is true that pressure groups lobbied for the internment because of economic motives but in actuality, it was too little too late. The groups were not large enough and did not have consensus with their other chapters to be big and widespread enough to influence the military. Also, many groups didnt start to lobby for internment until after the decision to intern the Japanese had already been made. This theory puts forth that there was an organized effort to lobby for internment but, there was no organized effort. It was splotchy and spread out at best.
Although the pressure groups did provide a barometer for prejudiced Army officials, confirming the receptivity of the public to anti-Japanese The Politician theory is the most easily discredited of them all. It is the theory that some politicians, in order to look like leaders, picked up the cause to intern the Japanese. Many politicians did pick up the cause to intern the Japanese but just like the previous theory it was too little too late. As the lines below will show, the activities of public officials on the west coast before Feb. 14, 1942, were relatively, if not absolutely, insignificant. State, county, and city officials were not uniformly or even prominently outspoken for evacuation at a time when their views might have swayed the commanding general (tenBroek 200).
The commanding general, General DeWitt, had made the order to recommend internment before most politicians had made any public statements concerning their support for the internment. The recommendation for internment came from General DeWitt and his staff. Not from pressure groups, or politicians or anyone else for that matter. It comes down to the fact that: The racism exhibited by the general and his staff was blatant and unmistakable, and clearly corresponded to (if it did not surpass) that of articulate public opinion along the Pacific Coast in the early months of the war (tenBroek 208) It was not a military necessity to intern the Japanese so why did the Army see fit to go through with it? Its clearly because of a racist staff of officers.
The people of the west coast, and maybe even the Army, were nervous and scared of the yellow peril. They ended up striking out at the shadow of the problem, the Japanese, instead of the real problem, their own fears and stereotypes, and by this blow they damaged not the enemy, but their own Constitution and free way of life. The Constitutional questions raised by the internment of the Japanese were many. But the most important question isis.
Was the evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the west coast constitutional? In Korematsu vs. U. S. , we hear from the Supreme Court on whether the evacuation is Constitutional. The ruling was that although prejudice based on race is unconstitutional, in the specific case of the Japanese evacuation its was ruled as Constitutional because it was relevant to measures for our national defense and for the successful prosecution of the war (Myer 260). We see here that the racism of the Army is justified by military necessity, which is used over and over again to describe the need for Japanese internment.
But there was no military necessity at the time of internment or any time during the war. Throughout the different Supreme Court cases, the court supported the militarys decision of necessity while saying at the same time that the internment was unconstitutional at any other time because of its racism. It must be stated that although the U. S. won the Korematsu case, some of the justices decided explicitly in favor of Korematsu because the evacuation was The case that addressed the actual internment of the Japanese in relocation centers was the Endo case. Although Miss.
Endo won the case because the authorization for detention was not expressly given under the order that established the War Relocation Authority, the Supreme Court never actually made a decision on the Constitutionality of the internment of the Japanese. This seems to say that the highest court in the land was afraid to rebuff the military. What does this say about the Supreme Court who is supposed to be protectors of the people. Will the court lie down in front of the military in the future when even more constitutional rights are at stake? Through its decisions, the Supreme Court clearly circumvented the constitution in order to protect the military, as an institution that would not directly violate the rights of its people under any circumstances.
Why would the military deprive the people who pay its wages, of their Constitutional rights? The answer is military racism. This would not happen to white people in America. The internment is just another example of the dominant portion of society making decisions that are only based on maintaining their rule. The military was afraid of what the Japanese people might do to sabotage strategic areas in the U. S.
even though there was no proof that anything like that would or could happen. The Japanese internment during World War II was hailed by the A. C. L. U. as the greatest deprivation of civil rights by government in this country since slavery (James 3) and thats precisely what it was.
The xenophobia shown by whites of the west coast dates back to the establishment of California as the Bear Flag Republic and continued to show itself through various anti-Oriental exclusion laws until the mid 1900 s. These exclusionist policies culminated in the forced exile of almost a whole nation of Japanese immigrants (most of them living on the west coast at the time) during W. W. II. The internment was unconstitutional but defended by the Supreme Court as a military necessity although it was obviously a deprivation of civil rights. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the west coast public was driven in to a state of war hysteria through pre-war conditioning by means of movies and books and later on through the use of yellow journalism depicting Japanese Americans as a yellow peril.
This functioned to demonize the Japanese, and make the public feel that they were disloyal as a race and not The general in charge of the Western Defense Command was General DeWitt, who, even though there was no need to intern the Japanese, made the recommendation to president Roosevelt to do so anyway. This is because of the militarys, and most of the publics prejudice against non-white foreigners at the time; which can be seen in the fact that almost no persons of Italian or German descent were interned yet almost all Japanese, American citizens or not, were interned. The public outcry for the internment was practically only caused by the extensive amount of propaganda used against the Japanese in the media, which shaped the anti-Japanese stereotypes that so many people had at the time. The only theory that does not cave in on serious inquiry is that military racism, which mirrored the publics racism, was the cause of the internment.
There was no military necessity for the internment and the pressure groups and politicians at the time were not organized and acted after the decision for internment had already been made by the military. Because of the racism exhibited by the military, and the Supreme Courts defense of the internment, although unconstitutional, we see a precedent developing which could render the Constitution only a formality to be side stepped in the future in order for the military to get what it wants. This will be a serious issue to be addressed during later internal conflicts. Bibliography: Works Cited: Contact, Maisie and Richard, Executive Order 9066. Anderson, Ritchie and Simon, Los Angeles, California, 1972. Daniels, Roger, Prisoners Without Trial.
Hill and Wang, New York, 1993. Daniels, Roger, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II. Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, INC. 1971 James, Thomas, Exile Within. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987. Meyer, Dillon S. , Uprooted Americans. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona 1971.
Spicer, Edward H. , Hansen, Asked T. , Luomala, Katherine, Other, Marvin K. , Impounded People. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona, 1969. tenBroek, Jacobus, Barnhart, Edward N. , Matson, Floyd W. , Prejudice, War, and the Constitution: Causes and Consequences of the Evacuation of the Japanese Americans in World War II. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954.
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