japanese internment essays

Find anything you save across the site in your account

A Portrait of Japanese America, in the Shadow of the Camps

In the nineteen-twenties, United States officials began preparing for the possibility of war in the Pacific, and the consequences this would have for the territory of Hawaii. About a third of Hawaii’s population were people of Japanese descent, a community that had first arrived in the late eighteen-hundreds to work in the sugarcane and pineapple plantations. But the group remained largely mysterious to American leaders. If the United States went to war with Japan, a military study from 1929 concluded, “all Japanese, alien and Hawaiian-born . . . should be considered as enemy aliens.” The report echoed long-standing nativist fears that Asians were incapable of assimilation. Colonel John DeWitt, one of the architects of Japanese incarceration, foresaw the need for “complete military control over the Hawaiian islands,” including the suspension of civil liberties and the selective imprisonment of anyone considered threatening to local interests. As the so-called Japanese menace grew in the thirties and forties, so, too, did anxieties about what role this community might play in future conflicts. George S. Patton, who would later become a famed general, drew up a list of a hundred-and-twenty-eight influential community figures in Hawaii, including teachers, doctors, and a priest, who might be taken as “hostages” in the event of war with Japan. Franklin Roosevelt proposed a similar, secret list of suspected agitators who might be “the first to be placed in a concentration camp in the event of trouble.”

There was little evidence that these communities were hotbeds of sedition. The late historian Gary Y. Okihiro argued that these suspicions were purely speculative, drawing from caricature rather than firsthand knowledge. In September, 1940, an F.B.I. report on the inner workings of the Japanese community bore this out, suggesting that “local alien Japanese” were “not organized for purposes of sabotage or subversive activity.” In fact, the younger, American-born Japanese seemed “predominantly loyal” to the United States. Whatever grievances these communities held, the report continued, owed to the discrimination they had experienced at the hands of white employers and landlords. “As a result, their resentment is directed more toward the Caucasian Race than the American government as such.”

Nonetheless, the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, fuelled racist paranoia. Shortly after the bombing, the columnist Walter Lippmann warned of a potential “fifth column”—subversives secretly living within the United States, plotting a “combined attack from within and from without.” He proposed a temporary, wholesale incarceration of the Japanese in America, even if it meant compromising on civil liberties. Some outspoken government officials agreed. “We want to keep this a white man’s country,” Bert Miller, the attorney general of Idaho, said. “All Japanese [should] be put in concentration camps for the remainder of the war.” On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the War Department the authority to forcibly remove and relocate all persons of Japanese descent in the Western states. With little time to evacuate their homes, many lost their property and businesses; decades later, estimates placed the total monetary loss between four hundred million and three billion dollars. The Wartime Civil Control Administration commandeered fairgrounds, racetracks, and cattle halls for temporary shelter in the Western states, where Japanese communities were concentrated, while barracks were built. Yet some hard-liners, like Chase Clark, the governor of Idaho, felt these measures didn’t go far enough. Clark compared the Japanese to rats; his proposal was to send them all back to Japan, and then to “sink the island.”

About a hundred and twenty thousand people of Japanese descent—two-thirds of whom were American citizens—were incarcerated in ten camps throughout California, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. Tellingly, there was no wholesale roundup of the Japanese in Hawaii, despite the long-standing fears over the islands’ proximity to Asia, a fact that suggests that what happened on the mainland was a deeply arbitrary interpretation of military necessity.

While Executive Order 9066 was largely met with doubt, despair, and anger among Japanese Americans, it also became a source of collective shame that was seldom discussed in the years that followed. Few stories of camp life were published until decades later. This spring, the writer Frank Abe and the literary historian Floyd Cheung published “ The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration ,” an essential volume that collects more than fifty accounts of Japanese life before, during, and after the war. The title alone is a bold assertion of identity: for decades, the wartime incarceration of the Japanese was described in euphemistic terms such as “relocation” or “internment.” And Abe and Cheung’s definition of “literature” is admirably broad, encompassing letters, editorials, poetry, short stories, manga, and government documents. Although there have been many books written on the history of incarceration, few have captured the kind of emotional detail that comes through in the largely first-person accounts collected by Abe and Cheung. Their selections paint a complicated picture, convening hopeful, patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics.

Before the Second World War, one of the more pressing existential issues facing the Japanese American community seemed to be the generation gap between foreign-born immigrants—the issei, or first generation—and their American-born children, the nisei. In 1929, the Japanese American Citizens League was founded to help this latter group navigate what it meant to be American. (Until 1952, foreign-born Japanese people could not become American citizens through naturalization.) Organizations like the J.A.C.L. retained a modest faith in the powers of assimilation. Toshio Mori, whose short story collection, “ Yokohama, California ,” was completed before the Second World War, but not published until 1949, writes of a “perfect day” at the park as two Japanese American baseball teams squared off. “The outcome of the game and the outcome of the day do not matter,” he writes, of this carefree, quintessentially American afternoon. “That is left for moralists to work on years later.”

The bombing at Pearl Harbor put immediate pressure on many young Japanese Americans to figure out where they fit in. Many had grown up with only a tenuous link to Japan, yet they also lived in the shadow of racist policies, like laws prohibiting “alien” ownership of land. Abe and Cheung focus on this moment of fear, offering the perspective of people reckoning with the inflexibility of wartime politics. John Okada, who would go on to publish “ No-No Boy ,” a dark, tortured portrait of the postwar Japanese American community, in 1957, was a student at the University of Washington in 1941. He wrote an anonymous account for the school newspaper exploring his conflicted feelings. “My dark features are those of the enemy,” he writes, though his “heart is buried deep in occidental soil.” “People will say things, and people will do things, / I know they will, and I must be strong.”

When Milton Eisenhower, brother of the future President, was appointed to oversee the War Relocation Authority, in March, 1942, he knew almost nothing about the Japanese communities he was tasked with incarcerating. He asked Mike Masaoka, the head of the J.A.C.L., for his thoughts. That April, Masaoka provided Eisenhower with eighteen pages of recommendations to promote assimilation and indoctrination within the concentration camps. Masaoka believed that his community had a patriotic duty to abide by Executive Order 9066. Not only that—he felt the camps could be used to produce “Better Americans” through further assimilation. “We do not relish the thought of ‘Little Tokyos’ … for by so doing we are only perpetuating the very things which we hope to eliminate: those mannerisms and thoughts which mark us apart, aside from physical characteristics.” As such, Masaoka hoped that those incarcerated would have “as much intercourse with ‘white’ Americans” as possible. He discouraged the use of Japanese in camp schools, writing that “special stress should be laid on the enunciation and pronunciation of words so that awkward and ‘Oriental’ sounds will be eliminated.”

Still, many instantly condemned the government’s actions. One of the most full-throated reactions came when the journalist James Omura testified in front of the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, in February, 1942. “Has the Gestapo come to America? Have we not risen in righteous anger at Hitler’s mistreatment of the Jews?” Omura asked. “Then, is it not incongruous that citizen Americans of Japanese descent should be similarly mistreated and persecuted?”

Some of the book’s most engrossing scenes come during the early days of relocation, when the Japanese had to take it on faith that they would one day be free again. Charles Kikuchi, whose personal journals wouldn’t be published until 1973, was a student at U.C. Berkeley when his family submitted to incarceration. “Oh, oh, there goes a ‘thing’ in slacks and she is taking pictures of that old Issei lady with a baby,” he writes, possibly referring to the photographer Dorothea Lange, who famously documented the implementation of the executive order for the War Relocation Authority. “She says she is the official photographer, but I think she ought to leave these people alone.” Kikuchi suggests that many of the old-timers around him are still inebriated from the previous night, while many of the younger people look “like they are going on vacation.” Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey, in an account first published in 2014, recalls a surreal moment on her train ride to the camps, when a group of Navajo people boarded during a rest stop and provided them with pieces of fry bread. “When the train pulled away, we fell into bemused wonder. How did they know about us? Did the train really stop? Was this a dream?”

Conditions in the camps were spartan. Armed guards patrolled the barbed-wire fence; on April 11, 1943, a sixty-three-year-old man named James Hatsuaki Wakasa was shot dead by a guard for walking too close to it. Inside, barracks lacked insulation, and the bathrooms were communal, leaving people very little privacy. “You couldn’t even have diarrhea without people noticing,” Alice, a character in Hiroshi Nakamura’s “ Treadmill ,” complains. The book, unpublished until 2011, is believed to be the only novel written in English by a Japanese American while incarcerated in the camps. The excerpt included in Abe and Cheung’s collection features a character attempting to escape, a rare occurrence back then.

Over time, anger and despair gave way to feelings of resignation. The poet Bunichi Kagawa writes of how young Japanese Americans “calmed ourselves,” making the most of a terrible situation. “The quality of life in camp attained this level because we were able to regain a sense of who we were. . . . What we managed to accomplish with our mere hands and feet permeated our environment.” Kagawa poured his energies into writing, co-founding a magazine called Tessaku , which published stories and poems from inside the camps.

This range of perspectives, from Masaoka’s conciliatory patriotism to an anonymous verse cursing the “DAMNED FENCE,” offers a sense of the community’s complexity. What they shared was a feeling of powerlessness. Reflecting on his decision years later, Masaoka explained that he had hoped a policy of loyal coöperation would get everyone home sooner. “I was determined that J.A.C.L. must not give a doubting nation further cause to confuse the identity of Americans of Japanese origin with the Japanese enemy.” The Mothers Society of Minidoka—a camp in Hunt, Idaho—drafted a letter to President Roosevelt and the First Lady, asking that their children be allowed to leave the camps in order to enlist and serve their country. They received a letter from Eleanor Roosevelt concurring that this would, indeed, help win the sympathy of their fellow-Americans. At the bottom of the letter is a note from the White House staff: “Dictated but Mrs. Roosevelt had to leave before signing.”

In February, 1943, the War Relocation Authority and the War Department administered a questionnaire designed to affirm the loyalty of those incarcerated in camps. It also offered draft-age men the opportunity to enlist in the military, if they answered affirmatively to two questions. The first asked their willingness to serve in the armed forces, wherever ordered; the second required their “unqualified allegiance to the United States,” as well as their renunciation of Japan. Approximately twelve thousand young men volunteered for service. The well-documented heroism of the 442nd Infantry Regiment, which consisted almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry, was a boon for wartime morale.

Yet the loyalty questionnaire was divisive within the camps. One in five nisei—the American-born, second-generation Japanese Americans—refused to answer, answered no, or qualified their answers to one of these two questions. Draft resisters organized sizable protests, particularly at the camps in Poston, Arizona, and Heart Mountain, Wyoming. At the Tule Lake Segregation Center, in California, they were met with violence.

These men would later be seen as heroes. But what’s striking about Abe and Cheung’s collection, particularly in these moments of rebellion, are the modest hopes held by those incarcerated. “I just wanted to be who I was—a Japanese American, an American of Japanese descent, an American citizen,” the poet and playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi writes. He was in his twenties during his incarceration. Kashiwagi refused to enlist, and he grew dismayed by the harsh treatment of his fellow draft resisters. “I renounced my American citizenship at Tule Lake,” he writes, but he came to feel like it “was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life.” Yet this was a no-win situation. How else to reckon with the paradox of your government seeking patriotic obedience while stripping you of your rights? “Living under such pressure, it’s inevitable that there should be doubts and questions about your actions, as well as feelings of guilt. Were my actions wrong or bad? What kind of man did this make me?”

Okihiro, the historian, whose book “ Cane Fires ,” from 1991, tracked the roots of anti-Japanese sentiment in Hawaii in the eighty years leading up to the Second World War, passed away late last month, at the age of seventy-eight. I’d been rereading his book alongside Abe and Cheung’s collection when I learned of his death. Okihiro grew up on a sugar plantation on Oahu, in Hawaii. “Cane Fires” grew out of his firsthand perspective of how wartime jingoism bore down on individuals, like his parents and grandparents, who “burned and buried” all traces of Japanese culture, like flags, letters, and records. An influential scholar and inspiring teacher known for his generous, mellow vibe, Okihiro later reflected on the deep psychological wounds that remained. “It was not so much the loss of property that bothered Japanese Americans,” he explained in an interview that he did in 2010. “It was the loss of their humanity, their dignity as people. Because they were treated as subhuman, treated like cattle: rounded up, given tags with numbers instead of names, put into cattle trucks to be assembled in horse stalls, or race tracks and fairgrounds, then to be dumped in horse stalls that still reeked of manure.”

In December, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not indefinitely detain a citizen who was “concededly loyal” to the United States, leading the way for the Roosevelt Administration to rescind Executive Order 9066 and allow for Japanese Americans to leave the camps. Each person was given twenty-five dollars and a train ticket to go wherever they wanted to go. Settling nearby was rarely an option. The Wyoming legislature, fearful that Japanese Americans from neighboring states who’d been incarcerated at the Heart Mountain camp would eventually want to settle in the region, passed a law that would “prevent Asiatic aliens from buying or owning property” in the state. Returning to the West Coast, Japanese Americans faced discrimination in the job and housing markets.

Few of the writers in “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration” expected to be read decades later, if at all. Some were merely keeping records for themselves. After the war, there was little hurry to revisit this moment of victimhood; the few who wanted to share their experiences with a broader readership found there was no real market for books about such a dark chapter of American history. Instead of dwelling on their plight, many Japanese Americans sought to reintegrate themselves into the mainstream. Once seen as an alien threat, they were now embraced as exemplary Americans. In 1966, the sociologist William Petersen wrote in the New York Times of the unusual “success story” of this community. “Barely more than twenty years after the end of the wartime camps, this is a minority that has risen above even prejudiced criticism. By any criterion of good citizenship that we choose, the Japanese Americans are better than any other group in our society, including native-born whites.”

But, as Okihiro suggested, it would take much longer for this community to reckon with the spiritual consequences of its wartime incarceration. The author Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston later recalled that her popular memoir, “ Farewell to Manzanar ” (1973), which she co-authored with her husband, James Houston, grew out of a conversation with her young nephew, who was born in the Manzanar camp but knew little about their family’s time there, because nobody spoke about it. The success of her book, which was adapted into a made-for-television movie, in 1976, helped undo this culture of silence. In 1978, community leaders organized the first Day of Remembrance, marking the day that Executive Order 9066 was signed. And in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which acknowledged the “fundamental injustice” suffered by Japanese Americans and provided them with monetary reparations.

Abe and Cheung close their collection with poems and essays that bring the struggles of the Second World War closer to the present. Fred Korematsu, who refused to submit to Executive Order 9066, and spent much of the war in prison, draws a connection between the wartime hysteria of the forties to the paranoia fuelling the war on terror, in the early two-thousands. The author Brandon Shimoda writes of a group of Japanese elders protesting the incarceration of children from Central America seeking asylum in Oklahoma, in 2019. “I am led to believe that Japanese incarceration, as one example, one blueprint, in an unremitting and interminable system has not ended,” he writes. “It has entered a new phase.”

There’s still so much left to discover about the experience of Japanese Americans before and after incarceration. Next year, the Japanese American National Museum, in Los Angeles, will stage “Cruising J-Town,” an exhibit about the community’s relationship to car culture, curated by the writer and scholar Oliver Wang. In the course of research, Wang came upon a startling image: while the vast majority of Japanese Americans were transported to the camps via rail or bus, many also volunteered to drive themselves; this allowed them to circumvent regulations on how much they could bring with them. On March 23, 1942, a convoy of several hundred vehicles, featuring cars as varied as Model T Fords and 1942 Chrysler s, set off for Manzanar from the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Upon arrival, the drivers submitted to incarceration, and their cars were impounded for the duration of the war.

A reporter watching the convoy noted that “many of the American-born youths wore sweaters indicating recent participation in high school and college sports.” It’s a heartbreaking detail. Nobody knew how long their detention would last. Many submitted in good faith, hoping that they would be recognized as regular Americans, even as they were being reminded that such thresholds could be moved capriciously and cruelly. It doesn’t diminish the injustice of Executive Order 9066 that some tried to make the most of life in the camps, passing the time together, in search of community. Some years ago, a Vietnamese American musician and scholar named Julian Saporiti was living in Wyoming, researching the Heart Mountain camp, when he learned about George Igawa, a musician who had started a jazz band called the George Igawa Orchestra while incarcerated. They were so good, and the region was so bereft of musicians, that they were allowed to go out and play dances and proms throughout Wyoming for predominantly white audiences. No known recordings exist of Igawa, or his band. But Saporiti, who records folky pop tunes under the name No-No Boy, used Igawa’s story for inspiration and wrote him a song, titled “The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming,” turning a dark moment of history into something joyfully jittery. “Locked up in prison camps for no fucking reason,” Saporiti croons, “but they still found a reason to sing.” ♦

An earlier version of this article misstated the year it became possible for foreign-born Japanese people to be naturalized in the U.S., and the nationality of Julian Saporiti .

New Yorker Favorites

First she scandalized Washington. Then she became a princess .

What exactly happened between Neanderthals and humans ?

The unravelling of an expert on serial killers .

When you eat a dried fig, you’re probably chewing wasp mummies, too .

The meanings of the Muslim head scarf .

The slippery scams of the olive-oil industry .

Critics on the classics: our 1991 review of “Thelma & Louise.”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

Books & Fiction

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By E. Tammy Kim

By Jessica Winter

By Stephania Taladrid

By Emily Witt

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Japanese Internment Camps

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 17, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Japanese internment camps were established during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066 . From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent, including U.S. citizens, would be incarcerated in isolated camps. Enacted in reaction to the Pearl Harbor attacks and the ensuing war, the incarceration of Japanese Americans is considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.

Executive Order 9066

On February 19, 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 with the stated intention of preventing espionage on American shores.

Military zones were created in California, Washington and Oregon—states with a large population of Japanese Americans. Then Roosevelt’s executive order forcibly removed Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes. Executive Order 9066 affected the lives about 120,000 people—the majority of whom were American citizens.

Canada soon followed suit, forcibly removing 21,000 of its residents of Japanese descent from its west coast. Mexico enacted its own version, and eventually 2,264 more people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina to the United States.

Anti-Japanese American Activity 

Weeks before the order, the Navy removed citizens of Japanese descent from Terminal Island near the Port of Los Angeles.

On December 7, 1941, just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI rounded-up 1,291 Japanese American community and religious leaders, arresting them without evidence and freezing their assets.

In January, the arrestees were transferred to prison camps in Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota, many unable to inform their families and most remaining for the duration of the war.

Concurrently, the FBI searched the private homes of thousands of Japanese American residents on the West Coast, seizing items considered contraband.

One-third of Hawaii’s population was of Japanese descent. In a panic, some politicians called for their mass incarceration. Japanese-owned fishing boats were impounded.

Some Japanese American residents were arrested and 1,500 people—one percent of the Japanese population in Hawaii—were sent to prison camps on the U.S. mainland.

Photos of Japanese American Relocation and Incarceration

John DeWitt

Lt. General John L. DeWitt, leader of the Western Defense Command, believed that the civilian population needed to be taken control of to prevent a repeat of Pearl Harbor.

To argue his case, DeWitt prepared a report filled with known falsehoods, such as examples of sabotage that were later revealed to be the result of cattle damaging power lines.

DeWitt suggested the creation of the military zones and Japanese detainment to Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Attorney General Francis Biddle. His original plan included Italians and Germans, though the idea of rounding-up Americans of European descent was not as popular.

At Congressional hearings in February 1942, a majority of the testimonies, including those from California Governor Culbert L. Olson and State Attorney General Earl Warren , declared that all Japanese should be removed.

Biddle pleaded with the president that mass incarceration of citizens was not required, preferring smaller, more targeted security measures. Regardless, Roosevelt signed the order.

War Relocation Authority

After much organizational chaos, about 15,000 Japanese Americans willingly moved out of prohibited areas. Inland state citizens were not keen for new Japanese American residents, and they were met with racist resistance.

Ten state governors voiced opposition, fearing the Japanese Americans might never leave, and demanded they be locked up if the states were forced to accept them.

A civilian organization called the War Relocation Authority was set up in March 1942 to administer the plan, with Milton S. Eisenhower from the Department of Agriculture to lead it. Eisenhower only lasted until June 1942, resigning in protest over what he characterized as incarcerating innocent citizens.

Relocation to 'Assembly Centers'

Army-directed removals began on March 24. People had six days notice to dispose of their belongings other than what they could carry.

Anyone who was at least 1/16th Japanese was evacuated, including 17,000 children under age 10, as well as several thousand elderly and disabled residents.

Japanese Americans reported to "Assembly Centers" near their homes. From there they were transported to a "Relocation Center" where they might live for months before transfer to a permanent "Wartime Residence."

Assembly Centers were located in remote areas, often reconfigured fairgrounds and racetracks featuring buildings not meant for human habitation, like horse stalls or cow sheds, that had been converted for that purpose. In Portland, Oregon , 3,000 people stayed in the livestock pavilion of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Facilities.

The Santa Anita Assembly Center, just several miles northeast of Los Angeles, was a de-facto city with 18,000 incarcerated, 8,500 of whom lived in stables. Food shortages and substandard sanitation were prevalent in these facilities.

Life in 'Assembly Centers'

Assembly Centers offered work to prisoners with the policy that they should not be paid more than an Army private. Jobs ranged from doctors to teachers to laborers and mechanics. A couple were the sites of camouflage net factories, which provided work.

Over 1,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans were sent to other states to do seasonal farm work. Over 4,000 of the incarcerated population were allowed to leave to attend college.

Conditions in 'Relocation Centers'

There were a total of 10 prison camps, called "Relocation Centers." Typically the camps included some form of barracks with communal eating areas. Several families were housed together. Residents who were labeled as dissidents were forced to a special prison camp in Tule Lake, California.

Two prison camps in Arizona were located on Native American reservations, despite the protests of tribal councils, who were overruled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Each Relocation Center was its own "town," and included schools, post offices and work facilities, as well as farmland for growing food and keeping livestock. Each prison camp "town" was completely surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

Net factories offered work at several Relocation Centers. One housed a naval ship model factory. There were also factories in different Relocation Centers that manufactured items for use in other prison camps, including garments, mattresses and cabinets. Several housed agricultural processing plants.

Violence in Prison Camps

Violence occasionally occurred in the prison camps. In Lordsburg, New Mexico , prisoners were delivered by trains and forced to march two miles at night to the camp. On July 27, 1942, during a night march, two Japanese Americans, Toshio Kobata and Hirota Isomura, were shot and killed by a sentry who claimed they were attempting to escape. Japanese Americans testified later that the two elderly men were disabled and had been struggling during the march to Lordsburg. The sentry was found not guilty by the army court martial board.

On August 4, 1942, a riot broke out in the Santa Anita Assembly Center, the result of anger about insufficient rations and overcrowding. At California's Manzanar War Relocation Center , tensions resulted in the beating of Fred Tayama, a Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) leader, by six men. JACL members were believed to be supporters of the prison camp's administration. 

Fearing a riot, police tear-gassed crowds that had gathered at the police station to demand the release of Harry Ueno. Ueno had been arrested for allegedly assaulting Tayama. James Ito was killed instantly and several others were wounded. Among those injured was Jim Kanegawa, 21, who died of complications five days later.

At the Topaz Relocation Center , 63-year-old prisoner James Hatsuki Wakasa was shot and killed by military police after walking near the perimeter fence. Two months later, a couple was shot at for strolling near the fence.

In October 1943, the Army deployed tanks and soldiers to  Tule Lake Segregation Center  in northern California to crack down on protests. Japanese American prisoners at Tule Lake had been striking over food shortages and unsafe conditions that had led to an accidental death in October 1943. At the same camp, on May 24, 1943, James Okamoto, a 30-year-old prisoner who drove a construction truck, was shot and killed by a guard.  

Fred Korematsu

In 1942, 23-year-old Japanese-American Fred Korematsu was arrested for refusing to relocate to a Japanese prison camp. His case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where his attorneys argued in Korematsu v. United States that Executive Order 9066 violated the Fifth Amendment . 

Korematsu lost the case, but he went on to become a civil rights activist and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. With the creation of California’s Fred Korematsu Day, the United States saw its first U.S. holiday named for an Asian American. But it took another Supreme Court decision to halt the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Mitsuye Endo

The prison camps ended in 1945 following the  Supreme Court decision,  Ex parte Mitsuye Endo . In this case, justices ruled unanimously that the War Relocation Authority “has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.”

The case was brought on behalf of Mitsuye Endo, the daughter of Japanese immigrants from Sacramento, California. After filing a habeas corpus petition, the government offered to free her, but Endo refused, wanting her case to address the entire issue of Japanese incarceration.

One year later, the Supreme Court made the decision, but gave President Truman the chance to begin camp closures before the announcement. One day after Truman made his announcement, the Supreme Court revealed its decision.

Reparations

The last Japanese internment camp closed in March 1946. President Gerald Ford officially repealed Executive Order 9066 in 1976, and in 1988, Congress issued a formal apology and passed the Civil Liberties Act awarding $20,000 each to over 80,000 Japanese Americans as reparations for their treatment.

Japanese Relocation During World War II . National Archives . Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord and R. Lord . Lordsburg Internment POW Camp. Historical Society of New Mexico . Smithsonian Institute .

Watch the documentary event, FDR . Available to stream now.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

News alert: UC Berkeley has announced its next university librarian

Secondary menu

• Log in to your Library account
• Hours and Maps
• Connect from Off Campus
• UC Berkeley Home

Search form

Japanese american internment - research guide, getting started, finding background information, off-campus access to library resources.

• Books/Media
• Articles - Secondary Sources
• Primary Sources
• Bancroft Library
• Research Help

1.  Use reference sources (see below) to learn basic facts about your topic, including dates, places, names of individuals and organizations, titles of specific publications, etc.

2.  Find and read secondary sources (see Books/Media tab for sample searches to use in UC Library Search  and the Articles tab for examples of searches to use in the America:  History and Life database). 

Make sure you look through the bibliographies of secondary sources, which can lead you to other secondary sources and to primary sources.

3.  Search for primary sources (see Primary Sources tab).

More about the writing of papers:

• The Craft of Research (e-book)

This classic book on writing a college research paper is easily skimmed or deep enough for the truly obsessed researcher, explains the whole research process from initial questioning, through making an argument, all the way to effectively writing your paper. 

Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students Professor Patrick Rael [a Berkeley PhD] has written a comprehensive but easy to skim web guide to writing history papers. Recommended by History Dept faculty.

There are two ways to connect to library resources from off-campus using the new library proxy:

• Links to online resources on library websites, such as UC Library Search, will allow you to login with CalNet directly.
• To access library resources found via non-UCB sites, such as Google or Google Scholar, you can add the EZproxy bookmarklet to your browser. Then, whenever you land on a licensed library resource, select your EZproxy bookmarklet to enable CalNet login.

More information is on the EZproxy guide .

The campus VPN  provides an alternate method for off-campus access.

• Next: Books/Media >>
• Last Updated: Apr 8, 2024 2:44 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/internment

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.

BUY THIS BOOK

2006 --> 2006 392 pages. $70.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9780804751476

Honorable Mention in the 2006 AAAS Book Award, sponsored by the Association for Asian American Studies.

This is a collection of the last essays by Yuji Ichioka, the foremost authority on Japanese-American history, who passed away two years ago. The essays focus on Japanese Americans during the interwar years and explore issues such as the nisei (American-born generation) relationship toward Japan, Japanese-American attitudes toward Japan's prewar expansionism in Asia, and the meaning of "loyalty" in a racist society—all controversial but central issues in Japanese-American history.

Ichioka draws from original sources in Japanese and English to offer an unrivaled picture of Japanese Americans in these years. Also included in this volume are an introductory essay by editor Eiichiro Azuma that places Ichioka's work in Japanese-American historiography, and a postscript by editor Chang reflecting on Ichioka's life-work.

About the authors

The late Yuji Ichioka was the founding father of the scholarly study of Japanese-American history. His book on the immigrant generation in America, The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 (1988), is considered a classic. He invented the term Asian American, and trained many of the scholars now teaching Asian American history at colleges and universities.

— H-Net Reviews

"Ichioka's ability to comprehend the complexity of the situation raises many fresh, thought-provoking quesitons in a field that appeared near saturation point." Japanese Studies

Mandarin Brazil

Ana Paulina Lee

Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless

Michael R. Jin

Transpacific Reform and Revolution

Zhongping Chen

Inscrutable Belongings

Stephen Hong Sohn

Nisei Naysayer

James Matsumoto Omura Edited by Arthur A. Hansen

Performing Chinatown

William Gow

Koreatown, Los Angeles

Shelley Lee

The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery

Caroline H. Yang

Here, There, and Elsewhere

Tahseen Shams

Mary Kitagawa

Karen M. Inouye

Minor Transpacific

David S. Roh

The Chinese and the Iron Road

Edited by Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Japanese american internment and the democracy of america during ww2, historical dynamics that allowed for japanese americans internment, impact of internment on the japanese americans during and after the ww2, works cited.

During the WW II in America, the government of America forced more than 120, 000 Americans of Japanese descent from the regions of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona to relocation centers where they lived for the entire period of the WW II. Since the internment process involved all ages among the Japanese American population, the general process of relocation was done by the humane War Relocation Authority (WRA), which spread the Japanese Americans in the relocation centers and US Army facilities. Although all the internees were released by the windfall of 1946, they had lost their businesses, homes besides deleterious effects on their social lives. Thus, this analytical treatise attempts to explicitly review the infamous Japanese Americans internment and what it suggests on the nature of American democracy. Besides, the treatise reviews the historical dynamics that allowed for the internment of Japanese Americans and the impacts of internment in the Japanese American communities during and after the end of WW II.

Basically, the Japanese American communities’ internment during WW2 was justified by the American government that classified it as a military necessity. The period was characterized by an indiscriminate roundup of Japanese and Japanese Americans who lived in the states considered a security threat since the main foes of the then America was Japan. Several instances of constitution abuse occurred in the disguise of national security. The American Japanese were forced and actually moved to relocation centers against their will despite the clear human rights clauses in the American constitution that protect the basic human rights of all American citizens irrespective of their descent (Starr, 14).

Though the fallacy of security concerns applied by the government seemed justifiable on the basis of generalization of threat, the decision lacked any concrete premise for the actions taken. Before relocation, there had never been any serious security threat reported as committed by the Japanese Americans. Despite being in the bracket of taxpayers and citizens of American, the democratic space of freedom of association and participation, the civic duties as citizens of America were denied since this group was subjected to unjustified detainment against the constitution of the United States of America through the ‘Executive Order 9066’ authorized by the then president Roosevelt (Executive Order 9066, par.13).

Interestingly, the internment policy was proven unjustified by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians that was later appointed by President Carter to find out if the government did overstep its mandate in targeting a single ancestry. Basically, the internment policy lacked objectiveness since the process only targeted one part of the nation and left other Japanese Americans living in other parts of America. The government has never been in a position to prove substantial incidences of disloyalty by the Japanese Americans who were subjected to internment (Connell, 71).

Despite the fact that the American government adopted humane strategy for relocation, the reasons for the same were never clearly communicated to the Japanese Americans despite claims full democracy and right to timely information on the reasons for actions before actualization. Besides, those rounded were never offered any form of compensation but were denied the opportunity to continue building the nation, which is the foundation of American democracy (Dye, 19).

For instance, in the Manzanar relocation center was lacking several basic human survival facilities despite hosting Japanese Americans of different ages. It would take unnecessary longer hours to access medical facilities and other basic social services for the internees who had a unique culture. Supposedly a totalitarian democracy, the internees were denied their freedom of association and access to social services on the basis of a biased internment policy targeting a single descent. It was only the Japanese descent which was targeted though the US had other foes like the Germans (Connell, 29).

The unfair treatment of this descent was a direct defilement on democracy, and the human rights principles enshrined in the constitution of the United States of America. Reflecting on the internment policy adopted by the government of America on the Japanese American communities, it is factual that the totalitarian democracy regime was defiled by policymakers and social decision-makers. Through internment, the basic roles played by the Japanese Americans were grounded and suspended without their consent despite having been part of the taxpayers (Houston, Jeanne, and James, 32).

The relocation centers were never designed in line with the unique culture and ways of life of the Japanese American internees. For instance, unlike in their former homes, the Japanese American internees did not have an opportunity to incorporate building architecture they had previously enjoyed and used to maintain a unique identity. Thus, the status of democracy in America in the period of WW2 can be described discriminatory based on unjustified biasness on the American citizens of Japanese origin (Hanel, 14). The government was unjustified to adopt internment policy on the Japanese Americans on the basis of national security threat since communal punishment does not serve the purpose of containing a situation. Rather, it only serves to expose the ills of a government supposedly democratic.

Several historical dynamics played against the Japanese Americans living in the regions of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona before the internment policy. Following the infamous Pearl Harbor attack by the Imperial Japan in 1941, the government felt threatened by the action of the Japanese and had to develop a policy to quickly prevent possible reoccurrence of the same.

Political dynamics: Following the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan in 1941, the political and military leadership of America felt threatened and developed a fear that the then relatively powerful Imperial Japan was strategizing for a combat showdown on the strategic West Coast regions of the United States. Before this attack, the Imperial Japan had enjoyed military conquest described by historians as very rapid since they had full control of major counties in Asia besides the Pacific by 1936. The reports reaching the political class in America was unbearable and some viewed Japan as unstoppable. As a result of this fear, the military and political classes were unsure of ethic Japanese loyalty in the face of an eminent threat to survival of the US. This fear was compounded by the ‘Niihau Incident’ when a captured naval airman of the Japanese regiment was forcefully released by three American Japanese civilians on the Niihau Island (Malkin, 22).

Social dynamics: The loyalty concerns by the political class in America on the Japanese American descent was fueled by the then common racial prejudice and the Nihau incident. For instance, the ‘A Jap’s a Jap’ racial slang propaganda made the Japanese Americans an easy target in the face of a possible attack by the relatively powerful Imperial Japan (Houston, Jeanne and James, 32). Due to the Nihau incident, the then internment program administrator seemed justified before the congress when he revealed his sentiment that;

I don’t want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty… It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty… But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map (Mullen, Par. 5).

Economic Dynamics : The Imperial Japan had gained economically from the series of successful military campaigns in Asia and the Pacific. Due to fear of possible destruction of the economic system of the strategic West Coast region, the leadership of America developed a rationale that interment of the Japanese Americans in these regions would give them a better chance of fighting an invading Japanese Army before they mingle with the Japanese Americans. Had the Imperial Japan army attacked the West Coast region, it would have been difficult for the government to identify the attacked since Japanese poses more or less same physic.

Economic impacts : As a result of the internment policy, the Japanese Americans directly lost their business valued at five billion dollars. The five years of internment grounded all their business activities and their businesses collapsed. The Japanese Americans lost their means of livelihood. Besides, this group lost their homes and investments in constructing these homes. Upon release, most their business have been destroyed, as was the case with their homes. The meager compensation of twenty thousand dollars for each of the survivors cannot be equated to five years of internment and lost property. The Japanese American community dominance of the West Coast region was completed destroyed.

Social impacts: During the interment process, the Japanese Americans lost their religious powers which could only be fully exercised in accordance with the deities and beliefs endorsed in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their unique culture. These fundamental ideas from the Japanese American religious culture were then misinterpreted into social conception of prejudice that resulted in abuse of their basic human rights. The supposedly democratic government which was mandated with the responsibility of protecting its citizens neglected its group (Burton Farrell and Lord, 7).

The Japanese American conscientious citizenship was compromised by biasness that victimized this group during their period of internment. They lost their social identity, traditional way of life, and communal existence. Though, the government of the US had offered apology for the biased internment of the Japanese Americans, the prejudice has remained among the other Americans as evidenced in the minimal political leadership roles played by Japanese Americans at present (Daniels, 34).

The infamous Japanese American community interment during the Second World War in the West Coast regions of America defiled the totalitarian democratic regime of the US. Besides, the process was the state constitution on basic rights of American citizens to free associations, participation in public service, and right of protection by the government against human rights violation. However, the Niihau incident and attack on Pearl Harbor provided the then political and military classes the rationale for internment of the Japanese Americans. As a result of internment, the Japanese Americans lost their dignity, private property, and freedom of association.

Burton, John, Farrell Michael and Lord Randy. Confinement and Ethnicity: Sites of shame . Web.

Connell, Thomas. America’s Japanese Hostages: The World War II Plan for a Japanese Free Latin America . Alabama: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. Print.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II . New York: Hill & Wang, 1993. Print.

Dye, Bob. How bigots ‘cleansed’ Legislature in 1942 . Chicago: The Honolulu Advertiser, 2001. Print.

Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation , 1942. Web.

Hanel, Rachael. The Japanese American Internment . New York: Hill & Wang, 2008. Print.

Houston, Michael, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James Diana Houston. Farewell to Manzanar . New York: Random House, Inc. 2007. Print.

Malkin, Michelle. In Defense of Internment . New York: Hill & Wang, 2004. Print.

Mullen, Fred. DeWitt Attitude on Japs Upsets Plans: Watsonville Register-Pajaronian . New York: Santa Cruiz Library, 1943. Print.

Starr, Kevin. California: A History . New York: The Modern Library. 2007. Print.

• Rights of Prisoners of War in the Geneva Convention
• Comparative Histories of Internment
• Manzanar & Japanese American Internment
• China and Japan Relationship
• Effects on Racial Minorities and Women in the USA
• World War II in Eurasia and America
• Why Did the Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor?
• The Life of a Freedom Fighter in Post WWII Palestine
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 22). Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/

"Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." IvyPanda , 22 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII'. 22 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." May 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

1. IvyPanda . "Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." May 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." May 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Civil Liberties — Why Is Japanese Internment Justified

Why is Japanese Internment Justified

• Categories: Civil Liberties

About this sample

Words: 544 |

Published: Mar 25, 2024

Words: 544 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, body paragraphs, counterarguments.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Law, Crime & Punishment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 461 words

2 pages / 1132 words

3 pages / 1224 words

4 pages / 1801 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Civil Liberties

Power is a multifaceted concept that is central to our understanding of numerous social, political, and economic phenomena. Yet, despite its apparent centrality to human affairs, scholars across disciplines have struggled to [...]

Government overreach refers to the excessive involvement of the government in the lives of citizens, often infringing upon their rights and freedoms. While government intervention is necessary for maintaining order and providing [...]

The legality of stop-and-frisk practices remains a topic of significant controversy, with differing viewpoints among scholars, policymakers, and the general public. While stop-and-frisk practices have been upheld by the courts [...]

A. In the dark shadow of World War II, the United States was embroiled in a conflict that tested the very fabric of its principles. Among the many controversial measures taken during this tumultuous time was Civilian Exclusion [...]

“No fundamental social change occurs merely because of government acts. It's because of civil society that the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand - demand - demand change.” Joe Biden. According to UN, [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, first arose following World War I. World War I had created a communist fear that swept across the United States. This was known as the Red Scare. As a result, legislators, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Research Our Records

World War II Japanese American Incarceration: Additional Resources

Terminology.

Many have grappled with how to properly tell the story of Japanese Americans during World War II without perpetuating euphemistic terms that the U.S. government and others employed at the time. Terms such as “relocation,” “evacuation,” and “internment” obscure the experiences of those who were forcibly removed from their homes along the Pacific Coast and incarcerated.   Densho and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), both Japanese American community organizations, have created guides for accurate language to discuss Japanese American incarceration. Their resources are below, as well as National Park Service glossaries that have been developed with their guidance.

Terminology (Densho)

The Power of Words (Japanese American Citizens League)

Terminology and the Mass Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II (National Park Service)

Glossary of terms related to Japanese American Confinement (National Park Service)

On This Page

Terminology ALIC and NARA Partners Genealogy Resources Publications and Commemorative Sites Japanese American Organizations Visual Materials and Exhibits University Collections and Research Guides

  Archives Library Information Center (ALIC) and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Partners

Japanese Relocation and Internment (ALIC)

Japanese Heritage Resources on Other Web Sites (ALIC)

U.S., World War II Japanese-American Internment Camp Documents, 1942–1946 (Ancestry) Microfilm Publication C53 (access to Ancestry.com is available free-of-charge, from any NARA facility nationwide)

U.S., Final Accountability Rosters of Evacuees at Relocation Centers, 1942–1946 (Ancestry) Microfilm Publication M1965, National Archives Identifier:  1055789 (access to Ancestry.com is available free-of-charge, from any NARA facility nationwide)

Genealogy Resources

National Archives - Resources for Genealogists If you are just beginning archival research, this page provides guidance about getting started.

My Koseki This website provides tools to locate Japanese family registers (koseki – 戸籍) – which will enable researchers trace their roots back to Japan.

Asian GenWeb Part of the WorldGenWeb, this site links to genealogical information sources in 26 Asian countries.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Genealogy Program For information on Alien Files (A-Files) not maintained by the National Archives.

Genealogy.com Provides contact information, web sites, and books to assist in genealogy research.

Stuart Terashita's Japanese-American Genealogy Home Page This website offers advice for Japanese-Americans on beginning their genealogical searches in the United States using: Social Security Administration information, death certificates, ship manifests, funeral home information, cemetery listings, obituaries, and World War II internment records. It also offers advice on how to uncover family history using Japanese web pages and records.

"Tracing the Roots: Using a Regional Office of the National Archives" An article written by Rodger Rosenberg for the National Japanese American Historical Society. Describes the records available for researching Japanese-American ancestors at the field offices of the National Archives.

Publications and Commemorative Sites

Articles and other writings.

"Abundant dreams diverted" Seattle Times article recapping the history of Japanese in Washington State in the early 1900s and their subsequent evacuation to relocation camps in the 1940s.

Records at the National Archives at Seattle and other West Coast Facilities Relating to the Japanese American Incarceration Experience (three parts), 2013

Records at the National Archives—Rocky Mountain Region Relating to the Japanese American Internment Experience , 2008

The Decision to Evacuate the Japanese from the Pacific Coast  An extensive and detailed army analysis by Stetson Conn of the circumstances surrounding the internment of Japanese-Americans.

National Park Service Publications

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Theme Studies , 2023

Report to the President: Japanese American Internment Sites Preservation , 2001

Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites, 1999 (rev. July 2000)

Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Japanese Americans) , 1988

War Relocation Authority Facilities

Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages

War Relocation Authority Facilities (National Park Service)

Amache National Historic Site (National Park Service) - Also known as Granada

Amache Preservation Society

Heart Mountain Interpretive Center (Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation)

Manzanar National Historic Site (National Park Service)

Minidoka National Historic Site (National Park Service)

Friends of Minidoka

Poston Preservation (Poston Community Alliance) - Also known as Colorado River

Poston Elementary School, Unit 1 (National Park Service)

Rohwer Heritage Site (Arkansas State University)

Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial Cemetery (National Park Service)

Topaz Museum - Also known as Central Utah

Tule Lake National Monument (National Park Service)

DOJ-INS Internment Camps

Kooskia Internment Camp Project (University of Idaho)

Japanese, German, and Italian American Enemy Alien Internment (Texas Historical Commission) Includes information and images of World War II Enemy Alien Internment camps in Texas, including Crystal City.

Japanese American Organizations and Resources

Densho Includes a digital repository of oral histories and other primary source materials, as well as educational materials and resources for researchers.

• Encyclopedia
• Oral History
• Digital Repository

Japanese American Service Committee , Chicago, IL

Japanese American National Museum , Los Angeles, CA

Japanese American Museum of San Jose

National Japanese American Historical Society Operates the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center

National Japanese American Memorial Foundation 

Go For Broke – National Education Center

Japanese American Veterans Association Includes a digital document project featuring records scanned from the National Archives.

Hawai’i Internee Directory (Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i)

Landscapes of Injustice Displacement and dispossession of Japanese Canadians

Visual Materials and Exhibits

Photographs.

Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar (Library of Congress)

Masumi Hayashi Photography , Family Album Project

A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution (Smithsonian's National Museum of American History)

Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) (Calisphere)

Japanese American Internment (Calisphere)

Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps During World War II

The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco:

• Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry 
• Evacuation and Internment of San Francisco Japanese 
• Excerpts from General DeWitt's "Final Report on the Evacuation of the Japanese" 
• Evacuees Operate Factory Vegetable Farm at Rivers 

Beyond the Barbed Wire: Japanese Americans in Minnesota

University Collections and Research Guides

Japanese American Incarceration Archives (University of Arkansas)

United States War Relocation Authority Collection  (University of Arizona)

War Relocation Authority Photographs of Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement (University of California, Berkeley)

Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records (University of California, Berkeley)

California State University Japanese American Digitization Project (CSUJAD)

Japanese Americans in World War II (Fresno State University)

The Lawrence de Graaf Center for Oral and Public History: Japanese American Collections (California State University, Fullerton)

Japanese American Archival Collection (Sacramento State University)

Japanese American Incarceration Camp Research Guide (San Diego State University)

Topaz Japanese American Relocation Center Digital Collection (Utah State University)

Guide to the Japanese American Relocation Centers Records, 1935–1953 (Cornell University)

United States Japanese “Relocation Center” Papers and Records, 1942–1945 (Colorado College)

Azalia Emma Peet Papers (Smith College)

Japanese American Internment Collections (University of the Pacific)

Mitsugi M. Kasai Memorial Japanese American Archive (University of Utah)

• Photograph Exhibits

Topaz Camp Collections (University of Utah)

Topaz Japanese American Relocation Center Digital Collection (University of Utah)

United States War Relocation Authority Central Utah Project Records, 1941–1945 (University of Washington) 

Minidoka Relocation Camp Photograph Collection, 1942–1943 (University of Washington)

Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project (University of Washington)

Frank Chin Oral History Collection, 1974–1986 (Washington State University)

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Japan

Japanese Internment Essays Examples

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Japan , Internment , America , Americans , Military , War , Family , Order

Words: 1100

Published: 03/08/2023

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Introduction

The Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, prompted the United States to immediately declare war against Japan. The Pearl Harbor assault and the eventual participation of the US in the Second World War have a widespread impact, and this includes a detrimental effect on the lives of the Japanese Americans in the United States. A few weeks after both countries declared war against each other, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, with the directive to designate some parts of the West Coast under military jurisdiction. The Executive Order did not specifically mention the internment of the Japanese Americans, but it nevertheless gave the military the power to exclude the Japanese from the area.

The Directive for Relocation

The Executive Order granted an extensive power to the Secretary of War and military officials who did not hesitate to use it according to their own prerogative. Further, it also gave the military the authority to evacuate the people given a reasonable justification. Thus, after the passage of the EO, the War Department administered the extraction of the Japanese Americans from the West Coast, according to what they referred to as the necessities of military wartime. Accordingly, the power of EO 9066 was used to exclude all people of Japanese ancestry from the entire region of the West Coast. The reason for the eventual internment of people of Japanese ancestry can be traced from intelligence reports that was taken as an evidence of espionage activity among members of the Japanese community. While the report was said to be false, and was fabricated by people who have anti-Japanese sentiments, the Japanese remained to be the focus of the executive order. According to studies, some of the prejudices against the Japanese during that time were not generally related to the ongoing war. There were selfish reasons why the Japanese were singled out and interned; a portion of a letter sent to Congressman John Anderson indicated that white Americans thought that there is no way for the Japanese to assimilate with the white race. Some of them saw the war as an opportunity to eventually get rid of the Japanese, whom they thought as competitors in many aspects. Other primary documents indicated that some Americans did not like the Japanese and have hoped to get rid of them after the war. Nevertheless, some found it sensible to extract the Japanese Americans from the West Coast because of security risk should the Japanese military attack the American mainland. Upon learning about the order to evacuate, many Japanese Americans sold their properties, and the urgency of the order resulted to massive economic loss on the part of families who were forced to sell their belongings at a much cheaper price. At first, the Japanese people were requested to voluntarily comply with the order, but the military leaders thought it better to be in full control and made the order compulsory. The Japanese men were rounded up by the military, while the women were forced to sell their properties in just a few days. Many of the Japanese stayed in temporary relocation sites until he completion of ten internment camps in the more remote places of the country.

Life at the Internment Camps

The life in the internment camps was difficult, as families were packed to share tar-papered barracks. The relocation was described as cruel and harsh; about four to five families share a barrack, and a common area for their necessities. Children comprised a large number of the interned population, and some would later recount how soldiers, with their rifles marched them towards the internment camps. There was insufficient medical care at the camps, and some of the internees died due to inadequate medical attention and the stressed associated with being camped and watched by the military. Moreover, the incarcerees did not only contend with the inadequate housing and facilities, but they also have to deal with the extreme climate in the relocation sites. While medical personnels were assigned in the camps, overcrowding and the unsanitary conditions contributed to the increased number of diseases among the internees. While they were expected to live their lives normally, such as the demand to allow their children to go to school, it was difficult for the families to adjust to life in the internment camps. The American government expected the Japanese people to be self-sufficient, but starting life with little support and in an arid place like the relocation sites was not easy for the families who have nothing with them except a few basic possessions. Men were forced to accept menial tasks despite low wages, and women have to deal with the shame associated with sharing commodes that exposed them to others. The internment camp brought havoc to the traditional Japanese families, for example, family members no longer share their meals such that men shared meal times with other men while the mothers were left with the children. Sometime in 1943, the internees were required to prove their allegiance to the United States by requiring adults to answer the loyalty questionnaire. Those who were found to be disloyal were confined in separate a separate site in Tule Lake, in addition to other forms of discrimination.

Life After the Internment

It was in 1944 when the EO 9066 was finally rescinded, and those who were forced to confinement were to assimilate back into the society. Some Japanese Americans who felt resentment of their undue treatment relinquished their American citizenship, still others went back to integrate. Fresh from being confined and closely monitored by the military, the Japanese found it difficult to regain the economic loss associated with their more than two years of confinement. Moreover, it was found that it was only about more than ten years when the United States government started to provide reparation of the economic loss of the Japanese during their confinement. In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act as an expression of apology to the internees.

Significance of the Internment

After many years of examination, it was found that the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII was unjustifiable. For one, the allegation of Japanese espionage was never validated, and many of the internees were people who have already proven their allegiance to the country before the war. Nevertheless, the internment of the Japanese during that time shall serve as a lesson for all people and governments to ponder. Several studies were conducted to examine the merits of the forced confinement, and the compulsory internment of the Japanese Americans will serve as a basis to understand the roots, and consequences of such events.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 2498

This paper is created by writer with

ID 285920420

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Free argumentative essay on sociology, example of essay on native americans, chi square test essay examples, example of essay on shell v rw sturge ltd, a response to language by martin heidegger critical thinking sample, research paper on punishment in early and contemporary psychology, nutrition and weight status essay sample, importance of having laws and the current criminal system in place research paper example, potential security vulnerability report, tay sachs disease research paper examples, two kinds an analysis of the perspectives essay, term paper on french enlightenment philosophical notes by voltaire and dalemberts dream by diderot, free essay on writer chose, product essay example, essay on creation stories in world religions, comparison of the laws essay examples, free essay on self assessment, good example of what is rock n roll essay, methodology thesis proposals, salary thesis proposals, america thesis proposals, revolution thesis proposals, gossip research papers, sponsorship research papers, cockpit research papers, shore research papers, bandwidth research papers, decoration research papers, retreat research papers, sailing research papers, prey research papers, infinite research papers, panic disorder essays, panic attack essays, jubilation essays, cardinality essays, balance of trade essays, indenture essays, sunscreen essays, stoicism essays, growing essays, regulating essays, penal code essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Photo Essay: Japanese Canadian Internment Field School 

September 11, 2023

In this photo essay, Densho’s communications and public engagement director Natasha Varner shares images and some of what she learned during a two-week immersive learning experience about Japanese Canadian internment history this past summer. The field school included a bus tour through interior British Columbia hosted by the Nikkei National Museum and then a seminar at University of Victoria through the Past Wrongs, Future Choices program. This is just the start of what we hope will be more Densho offerings about the Japanese Canadian internment* experience in coming years.

Much like in the US, Japanese Canadian internment didn’t materialize overnight. It was the culmination of decades of anti-Asian racism that included everything from discriminatory laws to violent mob attacks, most notably Vancouver’s 1907 “race riot.” Although both Issei and Nisei were denied the right to vote in Canada, many had become naturalized British subjects so that by the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks, three quarters of the Nikkei population was either naturalized or native-born Canadians. But that status did not protect them from egregious acts of state violence.

After Pearl Harbor and a December 1941 Japanese attack on British territory in Hong Kong, Canada’s federal cabinet used the War Measures Act of 1914 to enact a series of policies, many of which were inspired by BC politicians under the leadership of Ian Alistair Mackenzie, an open white supremacist and anti-Japanese cabinet minister from British Columbia. As long as the War Measures Act was in effect, the drastic measures could not be legally challenged. 

Caption: Hastings Park, where some 8,000 Japanese Canadians were packed into converted fairground buildings and forced to live in squalor for months on end while they awaited longer term placement. Oral history accounts often mention the terrible noise and smell, and complete lack of privacy. Historic photo shows the interior of the men’s dormitory, courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum Alex Eastwood Collection 1994.69.3.18 . Contemporary photo taken outside the old livestock building where women and children were temporarily forced to live in unsanitary conditions.

Caption: Confiscated fishing boats in the once-thriving Japanese Canadian fishing village of Steveston, at the mouth of the Fraser River. The boats were stored so haphazardly that many sustained serious damage and were either destroyed entirely or sold off at a fraction of their value. Image of impounded fishing vessels courtesy of Nikkei National Museum Kishizo Kimura Collection 2010-4-2-1-11a .

Beginning in January 1942, Nikkei men within a 100-mile radius of the coast of British Columbia between the ages of 18 and 45 were rounded up and sent to forced labor camps – euphemistically called “road camps” – where they had to engage in grueling highway construction. BC politicians – particularly Ian Mackenzie – didn’t stop there. They continued to advocate for the removal of all Japanese Canadians and on February 26, 1942 their vision came to pass in the form of an Executive Order closely modeled off of EO9066 . 

Within a matter of weeks, the forced removal of all Nikkei residents of British Columbia began. Japanese Canadian women, children, and the men who had not already been forced into labor camps were given as little as 24 hours notice to pack their belongings and leave their homes. Many were then forced to live in overcrowded squalor in a massive fairgrounds-turned-detention facility – Hastings Park – in Vancouver. 

They were then funneled to different types of camps depending on their circumstances: Around 12,000 were sent to internment camps in interior BC, many of which were situated in repurposed ghost towns or on lands leased from farmers. Some families were able to reunite by “volunteering” to work on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba. And those with enough savings on hand and the right connections were permitted to establish “self-supporting” camps or relocate to live with family in eastern Canada. 

Their trials didn’t end there. Beginning in 1943, Japanese Canadians were systematically dispossessed of their property by the Canadian government. Homes, farms, businesses, and other possessions were sold – often at a fraction of their value. The funds were then placed in government-managed accounts and doled out in tightly restricted monthly stipends which internees had to use to pay for basic necessities in the camps. This scheme – which Ian Mackenzie also masterminded and advocated for – served to deter Japanese Canadians from ever returning to the West Coast and provided jobs and housing for white Canadians, particularly veterans. As Masumi Izumi writes in the Densho Encyclopedia , “The Canadian government systematically deprived Japanese Canadians of their property, and effectively made them pay for their own incarceration.” 

Caption: Tashme, the largest and most isolated of the camps in what’s now called Sunshine Valley. Now a small museum and the Tashme Historical Project is housed in what was once the butcher shop and an 80-year old gobo plant grows outside a replica barrack. Historic photo of Tashme courtesy of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre . Contemporary photos show Tashme museum founder and curator Ryan Ellan giving a tour of the site to bus tour participants and a sign that marks the entrance to Sunshine Valley, the former site of the Tashme Internment Camp.

Caption: Fellow members of the bus tour listen to a talk at the Nikkei Legacy Park in Greenwood, BC. Greenwood was an abandoned copper mining town in 1942. Catholic clergy welcomed many fishing families from Steveston who were trying to keep their families intact and provided education to the children for the duration of the war. Many Japanese Canadians stayed in Greenwood after the war, helping to reverse the economic and social decline that had preceded their arrival.  

Caption: There are no visible remains of Lemon Creek, which was once the second largest of the camps with a population of 1,851. Lemon Creek was one of four detention sites in the Slocan Extension, where the BC government leased pastures and farmlands on which Japanese Canadians were made to build their own shacks and cities to sustain them. Historic photo of Tsusano Baba and Jack Baba seated on a garden fence at Lemon Creek; courtesy of Nikkei National Museum Frank Baba Collection 2013.9.1.2 . Contemporary photo of a fellow bus tour participant walking what was once a railway that ran along the perimeter of the camp.   

Caption: Some 1,500 Japanese Canadians lived in New Denver, where an impressive interpretive center, surviving barracks, and historic artifacts donated by the families that once lived here help make the history of what was once here feel more tangible. Our guide at the museum, Ruby, talked about why Japanese Canadians continued living in New Denver long after the war: “They stayed and they stayed and they stayed until 1957,” she said, “because they had nowhere else to go and because they had each other.” Photos show barracks and artifacts from the camp at the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre .

Caption: Sandon is nicknamed the “Sunless City.” It’s a mostly abandoned ghost town situated in a narrow valley between two steep mountains prone to rockslides and cloaked in damp gloom even at the height of summer. During the war, its population swelled from 20 to nearly 1,000 mostly elderly Japanese Canadians who renovated and rebuilt buildings that had been abandoned after the town’s 19 th century silver mining boom had ended. Historic photo shows children posing in front of a building in Sandon, BC. The teacher in the top right corner is Lillian Nishikawa; she taught Sunday school and played the piano at the Buddhist church, courtesy of Nikkei National Museum and the Sakamoto Family Collection, ​​1993.34.9.a-c . Contemporary photos show a building in present-day Sandon and a row of salvaged Vancouver trolley buses now being stored in the town.

Caption: Kaslo, another ghost town camp where nearly 1,000 Japanese Canadians lived during WWII. The only Japanese Canadian newspaper that was allowed to be published during the war, The New Canadian, was published out of Kaslo. The offices and printing press were housed in what is now a natural foods store. Around 80 Japanese Canadians lived in The Langham, pictured here, during WWII. The building later fell into disrepair but now houses a small museum and performance space. Historic photo shows a steamer docked at a pier on Kootenay Lake with Japanese Canadian men, women and children walking off at Kaslo, courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum Kumano Family Collection , 2011.19.15 . Contemporary photo shows bus tour participants outside the present-day Langham Cultural Centre and museum.

Caption: East Lillooet was a “self-supporting” camp built in the hot and arid lowlands along the Fraser River. Around 55 families who had enough resources to fully support themselves lived in tar paper shacks here for the duration of the war and into the late 1940s. In this picture, a bus tour member points to where her family’s home once stood. Her sister was also on the tour and I was able to get to know her over several hours of sitting on the bus together. She had also just suffered the loss of her husband – this was the first trip she’d taken without him, and her first time returning to East Lillooett since being born there in 1947. She later told me that she wanted to share more with the group, but that “the emotions just get too piled up.”

In December 1944, the Canadian government made all internees fill out a repatriation form. Like the highly divisive and misguided “loyalty questionnaire” in the US, this form was both confusingly worded and immensely consequential. It presented Japanese Canadians with two undesirable options aimed at ensuring their permanent removal from the West Coast: immediate relocation to east of the Rockies or postwar “repatriation” to Japan (in reality, this was a deportation to a foreign, war-ravaged land for most respondents). 

The anguishing decisions about how to respond to this form were made under such extreme duress that they can barely be called decisions at all. And yet they had immediate and long-lasting consequences for the lives of Japanese Canadians. Many of the 10,000 who had chosen “repatriation” attempted to revoke their repatriation applications when Japan surrendered in August 1945. They were at first denied and then, under mounting public pressure, permitted to maintain their Canadian citizenship. 

Ultimately around 4,000 Japanese Canadians were deported and stripped of their citizenship under this system. Thousands of others were “dispersed” East of the Rockies in a deliberate attempt to prevent their return to the West Coast and to isolate Japanese Canadians from their communities. This is known colloquially as the “second uprooting.” The exclusion orders were finally lifted in 1949, but the impacts of years of uprootings, dispossession, deportation, and dispersal left lasting wounds. The 1970s saw a cultural resurgence and a redress movement much like that in the US . A month after the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed a redress bill that included a formal apology as well as $21,000 to survivors, recovery of Canadian citizenship to those who had been deported, and educational funds. 

These are just the broad strokes of a long and complicated history. Within this overview are thousands of stories of heartbreak, of hopelessness, of resilience, and of resistance. I hope to take all that I learned during my time in BC to help bring some of those stories to Densho’s audiences, but I want to do this with extreme sensitivity to ongoing conversations among Japanese Canadians about who is telling this story and how it is told.

As I reflect back on the bus tour and look ahead to the role that Densho might play in sharing this story, I’m humbled and enormously grateful to the community of people I was able to learn from and alongside during the field school. At times, I’ve found myself comparing what I know of Japanese American incarceration history to what I learned on this trip but ultimately I think that’s an impossible calculation – the Japanese Canadian wartime experience wasn’t better or worse than the Japanese American experience, it was simply different. Both constituted large scale violations of human rights and, as with other dark parts of our history, the question we ask shouldn’t be who had it worse, but rather: what responsibility do we all have in making sure that nothing like this ever happens again?

Text and photos by Natasha Varner, Densho Communications and Public Engagement Director

 *Terminology note: “internment” is still dominantly used in Canada, so I’m using that here even though Densho’s preferred terminology is “incarceration.”

Sources and further reading:  

Karizumai: A Guide to Japanese Canadian Internment Sites by Linda Kawamoto Reid and Beth Carter

Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre

The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians During the Second World War by Ann Gomer Sunahara

Past Wrongs, Future Choices

[Header image: Tents where Japanese Canadians were housed in Slocan, BC. Courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum 1992.11.1.a-c .]

Make a gift to Densho to support the Catalyst!

Categories: international , photo essay

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Why We Must Keep the Memory of D-Day Alive

By Garrett M. Graff

Mr. Graff is a journalist, a historian and the author, most recently, of “When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day.”

Day by passing day, the Greatest Generation is coming toward its end. D-Day, June 6, 1944, had more than two million Allied personnel on the move across Operation Overlord, and today perhaps a few thousand veterans remain.

In 2021, Harry Parham, believed to be the last Black combat veteran of D-Day — about 2,000 Black troops landed that day — died at 99. Last July, Leon Gautier, the last surviving French commando at the Normandy landings, died. In December, it was Maureen Sweeney, the Irish weather observer whose reports of storms over the Atlantic changed the course of D-Day. In April, it was Bill Gladden, who had been part of the British Sixth Airborne Division’s glider landing on that day and had hoped, at age 100, to survive to return to Normandy, France, for Thursday’s 80th anniversary.

As we mark the final passing of those who won that war, it’s easy to get caught up in gauzy romanticism and lose sight of how the Axis powers unified the free world against them and showed Americans, specifically, what we are capable of.

Every serviceman headed to Normandy was handed a “Pocket Guide to France” that read, in part: “We democracies aren’t just doing favors in fighting for each other when history gets tough. We’re all in the same boat. Take a look around you as you move into France and you’ll see what the Nazis do to a democracy.”

This election year it is worth asking what we are doing with the legacy that the Greatest Generation defended and bequeathed to us. American freedom has always been imperfect — a nation seeking, generation after generation, to be better, more equal, more inclusive and still more free. It is a story of hard-fought rights and bloodily defended liberties that each generation of Americans has handed down to the next, a vision for a future in which each successive generation will improve upon the past.

We now face the very real question of whether America will embrace a vision of a country less free and less democratic, more divided and more unequal. It would be a step backward unlike almost anything else in American history.

We can hold on to the past to be reminded of what America, and its allies, were once able to achieve. D-Day was a titanic enterprise, perhaps the largest and most complex single operation in human history — an effort to launch a force of more than a million men across the English Channel on more than 3,000 planes and more than 7,000 ships; to methodically transport entire floating harbors, a herculean secret project known as the Mulberries, as well as 300,500 gallons of drinking water and 800,000 pints of blood plasma, a stockpile carefully segregated, as mandated at the time, between white and Black donors.

The day, fought across five beaches and a roughly 60-mile-wide front, is too vast to comprehend and, in that sense, is best understood at the level of the individual. Take the story of Albert Mominee serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment. He was a slight 28-year-old from Southbridge, Mass., who had cleared the Army’s five-foot height minimum by a mere inch. Two years into his military service, D-Day would already be his third foreign invasion.

He was among the older of the troops at the time; many of the “veteran” sergeants on D-Day were just in their early 20s, while the paratroopers and soldiers they commanded were often still in their teens. The coxswain of LCT-589, Edward Bacalia, known as “Bugs,” was 17 years old. “We owed our skins to Bugs’s seamanship, too, that day,” recalled his crew mate Martin Waarvick. “How about that: 17 years old and piloting a landing craft onto Omaha Beach on D-Day? Not just once, but twice.”

Pvt. Frank Palys, of the 101st Airborne’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment — the regiment whose Easy Company was later immortalized in the mini-series “Band of Brothers” — recalled, “I was just a young kid, like the rest of them, trying to free the world from the Nazis.” Or, as Pvt. Ernest Hilberg, of the 18th Infantry Regiment, put it: “I was doing a job that had to be done, that we were going to get rid of the bastard Hitler.”

What that Greatest Generation fought for on D-Day was noble — the first successful cross-Channel invasion from Britain in history, launched not to subjugate or seize but to liberate a continent darkened by authoritarianism. As the supreme allied commander, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, told CBS’s Walter Cronkite, when they returned to Normandy in 1964 for the 20th anniversary, “These men came here — British, and our other allies, Americans — to storm these beaches for one purpose only, not to gain anything for ourselves, not to fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest, but just to preserve freedom.”

It took another 20 years for the heroism of what would come to be called the Greatest Generation to be appropriately lionized. For decades, few had spoken openly or boastfully of the fights of World War II. Veterans, ripped early from their already hard peacetime childhoods during the Great Depression, had been deposited back in the country after 1945 flush with hard-earned experience, youthful energy and G.I. Bill cash. They settled into aggressively pursuing their daily lives and an American economic boom that created, as politicians often celebrated, the strongest middle class in world history.

In their adulthoods, they held the line against the Communists and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, again defending freedom from authoritarianism. First Sgt. Leonard G. Lomell, of the Second Ranger Battalion, who had climbed the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in Normandy to disable a threatening German battery, captured the sentiment of many: “I’ve kept a low profile for 50 years, as have most of my men. We didn’t write articles, books, make speeches or publicize the performance of our duties. We knew what each other did and we did our duty like professionals. We weren’t heroes; we were just good Rangers.”

It was President Ronald Reagan’s speech at Pointe du Hoc in 1984, celebrating the exploits of Lomell and his comrades, that began to properly honor and memorialize the fight of World War II. Follow-on work by writers like Stephen Ambrose, Douglas Brinkley and Tom Brokaw changed forever how history will view the sacrifices of both the living and the dead of World War II.

Mr. Brokaw found himself transformed by his journey at the 40th anniversary through the cafes and villages of Normandy, speaking to veterans who had returned to view the beaches they had fought so hard to capture. “I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. I realized that they had been all around me as I was growing up and that I had failed to appreciate what they had been through and what they had accomplished,” Mr. Brokaw wrote in the introduction of his 1998 book, “The Greatest Generation.”

Now it feels almost trite to label World War II the “Good War,” but, in so many ways, for America it was — arguably the last war America fought that ended with a clear victory, waged against an enemy that united America more than it divided us, the last war that clearly pitted good against evil in the pursuit of the ideals of freedom and democracy, which in today’s America feels ever more elusive, unfortunately controversial, and too often negotiable or situational.

America’s role in World War II was far from perfect — recent years have seen an overdue reckoning with the internment of Japanese Americans, to name just one dark chapter. But it was a war we understood and one that gave meaning to those who fought in it. It was a war for an ideal, where our leaders and politicians asked clearly and confidently for sacrifice for noble reasons.

Across the next few months we will be hearing a lot of argument about what America is and what it isn’t. There’s a simpler answer to that question than many would like to admit: What we’ll fight for is who we are. And, as we look ahead, we must decide if we’re still as willing today to fight for democracy as the generation who stormed Normandy was 80 years ago.

Mr. Graff is a journalist, a historian and the author, most recently, of “ When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Steals & Deals: Up to 85% off skin care, earrings, sandals and more

• Share this —

• Watch Full Episodes
• Read With Jenna
• Inspirational
• Relationships
• TODAY Table
• Newsletters
• Start TODAY
• Shop TODAY Awards
• Citi Concert Series
• Listen All Day

Follow today

More Brands

• On The Show
• TODAY Plaza

Oldest living Japanese American, 110, who still gets her hair done weekly, shares tips for long life

With 110 years of life behind her, Yoshiko Miwa isn’t going to wallow in the negative, and she doesn’t want you to either.

The oldest living person of Japanese descent in the United States, according to the Gerontology Research Group , Miwa prefers to focus on the times when she was happiest. She’s lived through the Spanish flu, prohibition, Black Tuesday, World War II, and the losses of her parents, siblings and friends, and still the supercentenarian’s go-to piece of longevity advice is: Don’t dwell.

Miwa is part of the nisei — the second-generation Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II — who often say “gaman,” which translates to “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity,” Alan Miwa, her son, tells TODAY.com. It’s often loosely translated to “perseverance,” “patience,” or “tolerance.”

These feelings, Alan Miwa suspects, are born from the resilience of many from his mother’s generation — who had much to endure. Shikata ga nai (仕方がない), a Japanese phrase meaning, “It cannot be helped,” or, “Nothing can be done about it,” is a common saying among them, too, he adds.

Yoshiko Miwa was born Yoshiko Tanaka on Feb. 28, 1914, in Guadalupe, California, to Japanese immigrants. She was the fifth of seven children. When her mother and infant brother died in 1919, her father struggled to care for his family and tend to the farm he owned. So Yoshiko Miwa and her siblings were sent to live at the children’s home founded by their parish, Guadalupe Buddhist Church.

She went on to graduate from Santa Maria High School in 1932, and she studied business at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1936. She married Henry Miwa in 1939.

During the Second World War, the pair and their families were sent to Poston Internment Camp in Arizona before relocating to Hawthorne, California, after the war. When they, along with many other Japanese people, had difficulty finding work upon their release in 1945, her husband founded a plant nursery business, and in 1963, Yoshiko Miwa got her nursing license.

Yoshiko Miwa has three sons, 10 grandchildren, 20 great-grand children and one great-great-grandchild.

These days, Alan Miwa says she’s in good health and lives in a care facility, where she gets her hair done weekly and attends church services on Sundays.

In addition to a positive spirit, keeping your mind and body active is the key to a long life, Yoshiko Miwa has said in the past . Ahead she shares a few other aspects of her life that she believes have led to her longevity.

She keeps an ever-expanding roster of hobbies

When Yoshiko Miwa retired, she'd walk 4 miles each morning. In 1990, at 76, she walked a 20K as part of the March of Dimes Walkathon. She’s an avid reader, she practices ikebana (flower arranging), sumi-e (Japanese ink art), sashiko (Japanese stitching), sewing, furniture refinishing and reupholstery.

These days, though, her favorite activity is sleeping, she tells TODAY.com via email.

She wrote an autobiography

After taking a writing course, Yoshiko Miwa penned an autobiography. In it, she recalls her travels to Rome, Japan, Paris and Niagara Falls. She describes life in the children’s home and the long walks to school, her siblings and her childhood with her parents.

“We had a big pasture for the horses and cows to graze on,” she wrote of her family’s farm her in autobiography. “Some days, my sister and I would wander around the pasture to pick wild violets that grew there.”

She loves to eat noodles

Yoshiko Miwa’s a fan of any kind of noodles, eating them every day. “When I was in the children’s home, the cook used to make noodles and I used to love them,” she says. “Today, I like spaghetti, udon, ramen, soba and any other kind of noodles.”

Her faith energizes her

Yoshiko Miwa is grateful to Rev. and Mrs. Issei Matsuura of the Guadalupe Buddhist Church, who took her in when her mother died of the Spanish flu.

Yoshiko Miwa was 4 years old when her father turned to the church for help. “The church then started a children’s home and taught us Buddhism, Japanese language, Japanese culture and responsibility,” she recalls. “I’ve always been indebted to Rev. and Mrs. Matsuura.”  

... And her family does, too

The Miwa family travels together and hosts reunions. “I’ve been fortunate that my sons, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and relatives have always been there for me,” says Yoshiko Miwa.

“Because my mother died so young, I have never enjoyed the warmth and love of a family unit,” she wrote in her autobiography. “Later, when I had my children, I keenly felt the wholesomeness of a complete family.”

Health Reporter/Editor

Can’t use retinol? These alternatives are effective, and they’re dermatologist approved

Bride, 102, marries groom, 100. They may be the world's oldest living married couple

Women's health.

Man, 107, broke the world record for oldest skydiver — twice. Here are his tips for a long life

New middle age.

Padma Lakshmi opens up about posing in lingerie at 53 for new line: ‘I’m in my sexual prime’

EXCLUSIVE: Christie Brinkley opens up about posing in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit at 70

Is your body aging normally? 7 signs to look for

Bride, 88, finally gets to wear wedding dress, veil as she marries her first crush

When does ‘old age’ begin? Public perception may be skewing later

Man, 110, still drives his car every day, lives on his own

Men’s health.

102-year-old grandfather of food star 'GrossyPelosi' shares his longevity secrets