Farewell To Manzanar: Should Japanese Americans Be Justified?

Farewell to Manzanar Essay The United States Government interning the Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor cannot be justified because the actions of the U.S. government toward the Japanese Americans were very immoral, prejudiced, and corrupt. One of the reasons why the internment of Japanese Americans cannot be justified is because Americans had already had bias judgements of Asian Americans, especially the Japanese. Another reason why the actions of the U.S. are so immoral and unfair is that the Japanese Americans were interned without a trial or concrete evidence against them. The U.S. government made a mistake that they later realized and attempted to fix. American opinions and views toward people of Asian descent were extremely biased, negative, and racially judgmental, despite the fact that many of them were American citizens.
Seeing something, or in this case someone, from a negative point of view for long periods of times weakens respect and personal value of that thing, or person.
So since, “For over 50 years… Americans has seen newcomers from Japan… as a threat to the ‘American standard of living’ (Myths, Prejudices, and War).” Being viewed as a threat automatically caused the Japanese to be seen as a liability to Americans and put the Japanese-Americans at a huge disadvantage. The Japanese Americans were not treated equally because of the previously formed bias judgements formed against them by Americans which was shown through “state and local laws [that] reflected the belief that people of Asian descent were inferior (Myths, Prejudices, and War).” Changes in the law against a certain ethnicity violates the 14th amendment which states that American citizens who should have been treated with the same rights that Caucasian American citizens were treated
with. Many rights of Japanese-American citizens were violated by the U.S. government. “Despite the lack of any concrete evidence, Japanese-Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral” which violates the Constitutional Mandate of due process. “Many [Japanese] Americans spent the war behind bars or ben formally charged with a crime” (Myths, Prejudices, and War), so if the government wanted to detain Japanese Americans, they would have needed to have a trail or legal hearing where they provided evidence against the accused. Therefore; it is not legal or moral for the government to have the power to detain anyone based on their ethnicity if they have not violated the rights of others or broken any laws. In the end the U.S government realized that they were treating the Japanese Americans unjustly and attempted to compensate for their mistakes. The government took their frustration and anger out on the wrong people. The American public wanted to punish someone and lashed out at their fellow citizens, instead of focusing on their enemy. President Roosevelt was under immense pressure from the public and ended up succumbing to bad advice and popular opinion “[and] signing an evacuative order… [For] the relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry“(ushistory.com). Finally, realizing their mistake, “the United States government began to reassess its policy towards Japanese Americans”…the secretary of war announced that every faithful citizen “regardless of ancestry” had an “inherent right to fight in our nation’s battle.” (Executive order 9066). This reassessment allowed the U.S to focus on the actual enemy and caused numbers to rise in the armed forces since “U.S citizens were no longer turned away when they tried to enlist” (Executive Order 9066). “President Regan signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent people of Japanese descent who” had been interned (From Wrong to Right: A U.S. Apology for Japanese Internment). Congress also agreed to “pay out $20,000 in compensation to each surviving victim” because when investigating the internment camps they discovered that the interment was “motivated by racial prejudice, war hysteria, and the failure of a political leader” (From Wrong to Right: A U.S. Apology for Japanese Internment). The U.S. government realized their mistake and attempted to justify their immoral actions with money, but no some of money can justify the way the Japanese-Americans Rights were violated and how they were treated. Despite the fact that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government cannot be justified for their choice of interning the Japanese Americans. Some of the reasons the U.S. government’s choices are unjustifiable include the negative, racial stereotypes that Americans previously had towards people of Asian descent, the fact that the interned citizens were given no trial nor did the U.S. government have and concrete evidence against the Japanese-Americans, and because the U.S. government where using irrational reasoning and being pressured from the public to punish the Japanese. Therefore, the Japanese-Americans had their rights severely violated by the U.S. government, and nothing can justify or make up for the way they were treated.