After the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. This act, based on ethnicity, permitted the military to bypass the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense. The order excluded persons of Japanese ancestry then living on the West Coast from residing and working in certain locations, and culminated in the incarceration of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens. They were detained for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis. They were forced to live in remote camps behind barbed wire and under the surveillance of armed guards. Japanese American internment raised questions about the rights of American citizens as embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
Source: 42explore.com
Write a 250 word response to one of the questions below.
- Do you think that the United States government was justified in incarcerating Japanese Americans following the attacks? Why or why not?
- Imagine you were a young person who was sent to the camps with your family, would you be angry about your experience or would you understand the fear that people felt following the attack on Pearl Harbor?
- What lasting effect, if any, do you think the internment might have had on the people who lived in the camps?
- Do you see any similarities between the detention of and discrimination against Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the detention of and discrimination against Muslims following the 9/11 attacks? Explain.
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