Explain Why Japanese American Citizens Should Not Have Been Interned

The Japanese American citizens should not have been interned. Interned meaning, “the state of being confined as a prisoner, especially for political or military reasons.” It was not fair to blame the American citizens no matter the race, because they had nothing to do with it. They could be inclined to help out their country, and that’s why we blamed them. This is misleading because every single American citizen that happens to be of enemy descent, has the same power to do anything that the Japanese American citizens can. Besides that, we expected them to survive in terrible conditions, telling them we were protecting them. Finally we treated them nothing like humans should be treated. All that for being a certain race? That’s
For example, they were only allowed to bring what they could carry. In other words, they may be able to bring food for two to three days, but otherwise they had to eat bad, under prepared food. Mike Honda on The Great Debate, explained how bad the food was prepared, and how little they got. So obviously it was not good for them.
-”In the early years of the internment, prisoners were fed potatoes instead of rice. People in the camps rebelled, and slowly rice was added to the mess hall menus, though it was often prepared badly, served nearly raw or burnt.”
This shows how terrible the conditions are. Another example of bad conditions is when there weren’t established camps, they lived in fairgrounds and race tracks. If you can imagine living in a racetrack for a over a week or even a day, without a bed it was probably the most uncomfortable thing they ever did. Up until the internment camps that is. To top it off, they didn’t have enough medical supplies, causing many to die of simple treatable illnesses. If you still think that it was right to intern them in these conditions, shame on you, but hearing my next point I guarantee you’ll have a change of
For example, when they were notified that they were going to be interned, people acted as though the Japanese Americans were invisible and “Without a second thought, they took our belongings.” This shows how much they were thought as a lesser person even before the internment. It only gets worse. Another example is that when they got to the camps they took horse stalls as their home, tried to clean them out and slept there. So yes, they were treated like horses. Finally, after the Japanese Americans had built a community in the camps, they played baseball. If you can imagine, they had little space to play, as they were barbed wire fenced in, guarded by machine gun posts and M1 rifles. When they would play, they would sometimes hit the ball outside the fence. From the site blogs.reuters.com/great-debate there’s a story told of a man climbing the fence to get a ball, as a guard yells how he’ll get shot if he continues. The man not hearing the guard, continues, get shot to death. Yet they were told it was for their own safety? I don’t think so.

In conclusion, the Japanese American citizens should not have been interned and you know it. They were expected to survive in terrible conditions. They weren’t treated like humans should be treated. They had nothing to do with the attacks other than their race, if that even counts. I do understand that the Japanese American citizens could be more inclined to help their country,