Monday, March 2, 2020
"Farewell To Manzanar" Internment Web Link Background Information?
Regarding the Densho Internment Link Resource, what are some ideas or
trends that profoundly struck you that are addressed regarding this
period in American History? Please use any quotes or specific
references to materials that validate your argument. Due by 3:40p.m. on Wed., Mar. 4th, 2020.
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I was surprised at how intense discriminated against the Japanese were at the time; many deaths we caused by none other than sheer racism and stereotypes during this time period. For example, the concentration camps were established out of the American fear of the Japanese, mainly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. These camps were brutal and separated people from their families, leaving them to suffer and eventually pass away. The lack of kindness and acceptance was very shocking, especially considering the fact that America is the alleged "land of the free".
Some ideas that stuck out to me was the idea that their race determined if they would be accused of something, and many of these people were not associated with the Japanese at all, and they were taken from their families because of it. It was said on the site that people were held in a place where they were not treated properly until they could be transported to an internment camp, and it sounded like a very difficult situation.
America did an awful thing, as we look back on it. But when you look at it from the side of the government. Those people may be spies, for japan and they did not want to risk it. So they put the people into camps. In a way, this was an awful thing because you were breaking apart family. Like in the book, the boy's dad was taken from his family for a little more than a year. That is an awful thing to do to a child and their family. It really struck me when they were taking away innocent people, but to the government, they had no clue on whether or not they were spies for Japan or not.
While looking through the link, I was shocked to see how much power the military actually had. The founding fathers made it so no one in the country had too much power. However, I think that when President Roosevelt said that the military could arrest anyone who they thought had anything to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it gave him and the military too much power. The quote "In response to racially inflected wartime hysteria following Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that gave the army power to exclude whomever it saw fit under the guise of “military necessity.”" proves that the President made a decision that gave the military too much power.
Some trends of the Densho website and other events in history all relate to the human fear of safety and people who look different from them. Such as during the Cold War, the red scare terrified people as the "Iron curtain" covered Europe causing chaos and fear to run high in the community. In the Densho website, Japanese descendants or immigrants were seized by the government and put in containment camps that were not ideal living. Mainly due to the distrust and fear of spies infiltrating America after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans were innocent and were locked up due to how they looked.
I think that it is really alarming that discrimination has stuck through the world for this long. The US viewed the Japanese as a threat to their culture and that is very wrong. The use of concentration camps was not helping anyone and frankly only made things worse. On the Densho website it talks about how racism against Japanese still lives on today.
While I was going through the Densho website I saw the common pattern of the people in different camps going through the same struggles. Everyone had to leave their whole lives behind. I realized that they just created new lives and communities inside of the camps. While I was researching I looked through the Densho Archives and searched one of my grandparents last names Seno. I knew that my grandpa and his family were in Rohwer, which is located in Arkansas. What I found brought great interest to me. I found articles in the Rohwer newspaper that my great grandpa had written. As I was reading through these articles it was really cool, because when I saw his name Sam seno, I got to see something that he had created. I had heard the infamous stories of him, but never got to meet him. The pictures are all very familiar that were on the website, and was very interesting to see this part of America’s history.
It is crazy to see that America created their own internment camps. Nowadays, we think of any sort of concentration camp as a terrible thing, especially after ww2. Even the Asian Americans were put into internment camps; already being a citizen of the USA. This quote was super powerful for me, "Which is the thing… I think liberty and privacy is what I miss the most.” It is wild to think that their rights were taken away so quickly.
-Julia Dunn
The link expanded my thinking, showing how much the Japanese wanted to dominate all of Southeast Asia. The link also showed me how dreadful and cruel the environment was in Japan during WW2. The Japanese families were petrified. The people living were terrified of being taken away and didn't want to be sent to camps.
Because of the dramatic bombing by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, a US navy base, Japanese people living in America were seen as the enemy or a possible threat to the country, which was now at war. In an attempt to week out any further conflict or potential Japanese advantage, all people who could possibly have a link to Japan were held in camps. Even people who have lived in America almost their whole lives or if they were to be considered a US citizen, they would still be taken away from their families. This was unfair and caused lots of disruption and fear in Japanese-American homes. The bombing of Pearl Harbor also created a racist viewpoint against Japanese people.
they created a community even though they were shunned. also the fact that people treated people who even looked like a certain race as if they were the enemy. it is from the section looking like the enenmy it shows the bias.
By taking only a glance at the Densho website provided by this blog, I discovered a little more about the Japanese part of the story during World War ll. This quote provided by the The Core Story section, “After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt cited military necessity as the basis for incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans—adults and children, immigrants and citizens alike. Decades later, a congressional commission found the justification of military necessity to be false.”, brought into light some of the controversial events that happened in World War ll such as the bombing of Hiroshima and the use of concentration camps in the USA. The argument described by this quote was that the “military necessity” of the situation was not a justification for the events that happened.
Some ideas that stuck out to me were how the people lived in the concentration camps. It is interesting how we went from completely distrusting the Japanese-Americans and putting them into concentration camps to drafting them into our military. However, the website also mentions how discrimination against the Japanese still is present today.
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