Ira Hamilton Hayes was an Akimel O'odham, or Pima Native American, and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community. A veteran of World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima, Hayes was trained as a Paramarine in the United States Marine Corps (USMC), and became one of five Marines, along with a United States Navy corpsman, immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.…
First settled by Polynesians sailing from other Pacific islands between A.D. 300 and 600, Hawaii was visited in 1778 by British captain James Cook, who called the group the Sandwich Islands.…
World War II is mostly known as “the battle against Hitler” but few people know that there is literally another side to it, across the globe, in the Pacific. The Pacific War, or sometimes known as the Asia-Pacific War, was fought in the Pacific and East Asia. This devastating war pitted the Allies, some of them being France, Poland and Great Britain against the Empire of Japan. It started on December 8th, 1941, when the Japanese invaded Thailand and other British possessions including Malaya and Singapore. That same day, in Hawaii, where it was still December 7th, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, which “severely damaged the American fleet and prevented, at least for the short term, serious American interference with Japanese military operations. In response, the United States declared war on Japan.”…
Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki, is a book chronicling the author 's personal experiences before, during, and after her internment at Manzanar. Through the eyes of an innocent child, and subsequently, a teenaged Jeanne, we are able to see the cruel and heartless events that occurred to the Japanese people living in America during World War II. The book follows young Jeanne, a Japanese girl, who was taken to Manzanar, an internment camp in California. It describes life from inside the camp as well as the experience it had on her and her family. She, along with her family, were placed in a single one-room barrack in Manzanar. The smallness of the building made them have no privacy, which is an integral part of Japanese culture. Jeanne and her family lived there for close to four years, in a grubby, unsanitary, makeshift 16 x 20 room. Then, they are unceremoniously tossed back into a society that is racist and wary of the Japanese. This book not only describes Jeanne 's life at Manzanar, but shows as Jeanne makes the difficult transition to womanhood, at a difficult time, in a difficult location.…
Imperialism is a policy. Based on this policy, a country uses diplomacy and military forces to expand its power and influence across the world. This will eventually result in becoming a superpower. When it comes to imperialism, America has a lot to say because it sure was a great imperialist between 1867-1917. Many American believed U.S. had to “expand or explode” because of its fast growing population. When the population grows, industrial production demand for more resources. People start to realize and worry that some of the existing natural resources of the country will eventually dry up. Therefore, economists saw oversea markets a possible safety valve for U.S. internal pressures. As a result, foreign trade was…
In February of 1942 president Roosevelt signed Executive order 9066, otherwise, known as the movement to begin Japanese Internment. This very well may have been signed out of pure fear of the Japanese resulting from their attack on Pearl Harbor. They deceived us and almost completely wiped out our forces stationed in the Hawaiian islands. In response to this not only was war declared but Internment was brought upon Japanese in America which from a military and strategical point of view is a really smart move. Internment camps were the right move in order to protect the country.…
Invisible to Invincible You try to crush them, break them, and humiliate them but nothing works, these men and women are the American POWs and Japanese - Americans. The American POWs and Japanese - Americans were made invisible literally and figuratively. But some American POWs and Japanese - Americans were able to resist from being made invisible. Louie Zamperini was an Olympic runner, until World War 2 started so he volunteered to be an American soldier but ended up crashing and staying in POW camps.…
Since 1893, when Fredrick Jackson Turner announced that the American identity was not a byproduct of the first colonists, but that it emerged out of the wilderness and only grew with the surfacing of the frontier, America has placed a great emphasis on the notion of a national identity. However, the paradox of the American identity is that although the United States is a melting pot of many different traditions, motives, and ideals, there are nevertheless, distinctive qualities that define the "American." It usually takes a crisis to cause an individual, or a nation, to renew itself. However, sometimes it takes a fight for survival to induce it.…
“A special bulletin on the radio announced that the Japanese had mounted a surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii” (Carnes 95). This action against the United States on December 7, 1941 by Japan cause racial prejudice and unrest in the United States. This event also lead to the making of laws that caused the creation of Japanese internment camps. The War Relocation Authority attempted to justify their actions against Japanese Americans in a couple of ways. “The action taken with respect to Japanese in this country is justifiable on the grounds of military necessity for several reasons” (Carnes 97). One reason that is stated is that “All Japanese look very much alike to a white person...” (Carnes 97).…
Japanese internment during WWII was justified because America feared attacks. “The West Coast was a combat zone”(government newsreel). Because of the recent Pearl Harbor attack, there was much fear of another attack. If the Japanese were to attack again, it was uncertain how the Japanese-Americans would react. They could either side with the US and fight against them, or join their ancestry and join the Japanese. After the attack, major portions of the Pacific Fleet was crippled, and the West Coast was exposed. There were more than 115,000 Japanese-Americans living along the coast. “...racial group, bound to an enemy nation by strong ties of race, culture, custom, and religion along a frontier vulnerable to attack constituted a menace which…
World War Two was a time of change. Weird alliances, lands of confusion, more efficient ways to kill, and most importantly, new ways to survive. The United States entry to World War two can be completely attributed to the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor. The United States had declared several neutrality acts throughout the course of Axis aggression in Europe and Asia. America first stated that they “did not recognize” Japan’s aggression when they invaded Manchuria in 1931. Then America “condemned” Japan’s ignition of World War 2 in the Pacific by invading China. Although Japan and the United States were still undergoing political negotiations about the recent Japanese aggression, Japan took a cowardly approach and bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. The United States officially entered the war the next day. Some of the Japanese leaders feared they had made the wrong decision. The Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is famously quoted as saying "I fear all we have done is to…
This is one of 120,000 Japanese internment stories. Asa was 15 years old when her family was forced out of their newly built upper middle class home in California. On December 7, 1941 was the day Japan “woke the sleeping giant”. February 19, 1942 was the day Asa her mother, father and grandmother were given 10 days notice to evacuate their home and report to a government provided facility for all Japanese-Americans.…
Visiting the Japanese American Museum was an extremely moving and often gut wrenching roller coaster ride of emotions both of happiness and sadness alike. The stories of triumph were ostensibly plastered along the walls in glass cases, but so too were the stories of terror and internment of Japanese Americans on no further grounds than their original origin. The Japanese were interned in barracks to supposedly prevent espionage from the US to Japan. The internment of the Japanese was akin to the internment of the Jews certainly not with as heinous of outcomes, but it is deplorable anytime one is treated differently and faces negative consequences simply based on their race. The stories of white empathizers really tugged at my heart strings,…
My name is Makino Toshio and I am a second generation Japanese-American. My father moved to Hawaii before coming to the mainland, like most Japanese-Americans. Before World War II, I worked on a Japanese truck farm. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, tension was bad for any Japanese-American in the United States. Many people in the United States did not trust people with Japanese ancestry. A store that I usually shop at had a sign in the window saying, "We don't want any Japs back here-EVER! Within hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor at Hawaii, FBI agents went house to house and rounded up 1,212 Japanese in the U.S. mainland and Hawaii islands. Most of the arrests were prominent leaders in Japanese communities. All of them were taken to unknown destinations and treated as Prisoners of War.…
Throughout history, there have been many hardships for people all around the world. Plenty of situations in life can impact people miscellaneously, whether it be positively or negatively, and these can impact change how things will look in the future. Internment of the Japanese Canadians in World War II was a revolting and disgusting catastrophe for the Japanese Individuals According to (Marsh, 2012), the Japanese had suffered the sting of racism ever since the first Japanese (Manzo Nagano) stepped ashore in 1877 at New Westminster according to (Marsh, 2012). Various impacts can lead people to be stereotypical, humans can be disrespectful towards each other, which leads to negative impacts causing struggles moving forward in life. World War…