Essay On Japanese American Internment Camps

The conditions inside the United States internment camps were extremely overcrowded and provided very poor living conditions. According to the reports published by the War Relocation Authority, the administering agency in 1943, Japanese Americans were housed in tar paper covered barracks with guard towers and barbed wire fences for boundary. Moreover, not only were these boundaries just boundaries. They were guarded by military police with rifles, and numerous Japanese Americans in these internment camps were killed by the military guards for not following the orders or because they resisted the officers.
Moreover, these internment camps were built in simple frame construction without a proper water facility or in other words plumbing, nor cooking facilities and the only things the government provided for a barrack were cots,
mattresses, and blankets. The buildings were very poorly equipped because these camps were built very quickly by the civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on the designs for military barracks. Some of them were still being built when people moved in. Coal was hard to come by and people slept under as many blankets as they found to protect themselves from the freezing temperature.
Being forced to live in a “virtual fishbowl”, camp residents often lost their traditional reserve and good manners (Iron, 76). Yoshihiko uchida, a women who experienced the internment camps for more than 3 years later wrote of her experiences in the central Utah relocation center, that the residents began to release their frustration and stress on others in acts that seemed foreign to the Japanese nature. “It was like an internal squabbling spreaded like a disease” insisted Yoshihiko (Iron, 76).
People in the camp usually worked for 44 hours a week, and were only paid 8 to 16 dollars per month (Iron, 6). Such physical hardships added to their discomfort of crowded living conditions. Moreover, in a later recollection, many camp residents reflected back on their experience mentioning “the dust and the sand” that blew across the camps, and seeped through the cracks of their improperly built barracks. Lillian Tateishi had a vivid memory of the camp in Manzanar, California. “Those awful sand storms. The sand would blow right through the floor. Every night we had to get up and wash off. Sometimes we had to wear goggles. Some people just cried” she reflected (Iron, 76).
Unfortunately, many died inside the camps due to lack of sufficient medical care and malnutrition.
Food was rationed out at an expense of 48 cents per internee and served by fellow internees in an extremely crowded mess hall filled with 250 to 300 people. In many accounts of the camps, Japanese Americans mentioned their meals with “dust storms”. The dust storms blew into their food too, which were often only a tin cup and a bowl with milk, and covered them with dust. However they were forced to drink them because that was all they had.
Though it seems like an contradictory action by the United States, education was provided by the War Relocation Authority (an agency that relocated and interned enemy aliens during World War 2) for all school age residents at the internment camps. However the courses were already planned and the government hired teachers who assisted the state departments of education. The extra vocational training that was provided at the relocation center for communication with the adults, were only for the evacuees who were able to play a more effective role in agriculture or industry outside the centers (Brown and
Leigh).
There was actually one way for the internees to leave the concentration camps. It was if they get enlisted into the United States Army. However the number of people who could sign up was very limited and only 1200 internees had the chance to do so. They were not given another chance so the others who did not had the chance to do so were forced to live in the internment camps. There were several requirements for these evacuees to leave the relocation center. The first requirement was to check the evacuee's behavior at the relocation center and any other information from the War Relocation Authority. If there were any evidence that the evacuee would endanger the nation they were denied to leave. The second requirement was that they must have a reasonable reason for where they were planned to settle. Only those who had a place to go or any means of support, were allowed to leave. The last requirement was that the evacuees must keep the War Relocation Authority informed of any change of job or address. However it was a very rare case that the internees got into the army. Even if they got enlisted, it was very hard for one to pass all the requirements.