INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE-AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES
This research paper summarizes the principal causes and consequences of the massive exclusion and evacuation of Japanese Americans (JAs) during World War II from the West Coast and their relocation to remote internment camps in the interior. In 1942 approximately 117,000 JAs were forcibly removed, transported and incarcerated by the United States Government. Approximately two-thirds of them were Nisei, persons of Japanese descent who were born in America and therefore were American citizens, and the remainder Issei, JAs who were immigrants from Japan and who were by law ineligible to become naturalized citizens. The removal and incarceration of the Nisei, if not of the Issei, represented a gross violation of their constitutional rights. The most important cause of this policy was the traumatic and panic-stricken reaction (fear and hysteria), especially on the West Coast, which resulted from the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Other factors included the long history of American racial prejudice and hatred of Japanese immigrants, as intensified by war passions, greed and envy and a near total failure of political leadership by all elements of government, including that of President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR).
The evacuation and resettlement of the JAs had virtually no military consequences since the JAs remained loyal to the United States. They helped stir up more race prejudice on the West Coast and hostility in some of the communities near which the camps were located. One important consequence was the transfer of JA property and wealth to whites and the impoverishment of most JAs. Removal and internment produced many other negative consequences for the JAs, including intense and widespread personal suffering, loss of self-esteem and internal factional conflict, but they also produced a shift in power within the JA community from Issei to Nisei, i...