What Were The Effects Of Japanese Internment Camps

On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the United States’ military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After the attack, Japanese Americans who had always faced racial prejudice in America encountered even more discrimination. This was starkly clear in Executive Order 9066, which authorized the War Department to corner off areas in which people who were considered dangerous to the government would be imprisoned. The order had a special target; to imprison all Japanese Americans. It ordered people of Japanese descent to evacuate the west coast and relocate into one of ten internment camps. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the treatment of Japanese Americans revealed the widespread racism the United States felt towards Japanese people during
The camps were constructed very quickly during the spring and summer of 1942. Therefore, the construction of the camps was less than ideal. The camps were usually located in isolated dry areas. In the camps, Japanese Americans lived in barracks that resembled military facilities. However, most did not meet the minimum requirements for military housing. The War Relocation Authority, a government agency created to direct the internment of Japanese Americans, described the building of the camps, “tar paper-covered barracks…without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind.” The camps had very unsuitable living conditions to the point that a visiting judge stated that prisoners in federal penitentiaries were better housed than internees in the camps. Two internees at a camp described the quality of the barracks. One said, “They used cheap pine wood. The knots would fall off…” The other stated, “the barracks were hastily put together and the boards had cracks in them...” These descriptions demonstrate the American government’s lack of concern over the safety of the
Japanese Americans experienced discrimination from other Americans inside the internment camps as well in daily life. Asako Tokuno, an ex-student at UC Berkeley, explained how after the attack she became more aware of her ethnicity by the way people began to treat her. She recalled that the same day she heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor was the first time she ever felt self-conscious about her racial background. That day she was waiting at a bus stop to go to UC Berkeley when she realized people were watching her, staring at her. She said, “I would get this terrible feeling that people were watching, looking at me.” This was due to the fact that she was a Japanese American. Tokuno’s example highlights the change in treatment Japanese Americans received after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Before the attack Tokuno never stated receiving any kind of discriminatory treatment, but after the attack she felt singled out by other people because of her race. Another example that demonstrates the discrimination of Japanese Americans during the war is the account of Jeanne Wakatuski Houston, a Japanese American internee. Houston was a seven-year-old girl when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. After her father was taken away by FBI agents, Houston and her family moved to a different area in California. There she began attending a local school in Boyle