Why were Japanese placed in internment camps?

Question

Why were Japanese placed in internment camps instead of Germans or Italian Americans, etc??

Answer 1

They were not as well assimilated, and they looked different from the rest of us. And they were less politically powerful than German-Americans. And many had immigrated here more recently. None of these reasons is meant to justify the internment you understand, but i think those are the main reasons Japanese-Americans were treated differently from German-Americans.

Answer 2

America was at the time (and still is now) predominantly Caucasian. Germans and Italians as the above people said don't look as "different" and foreign. Nazi Germany murdered 11 million but that occurred throughout Europe, not the USA. America doesn't take action until something occurs on their own soil.

But as I said, Nazi Germany murdered Jews and other minorities in Europe, not the USA. The Italians had their own Fascist situation, which did not directly affect the USA. The Japanese were directly involved with the USA at Pearl Harbor.

My English teacher once told me about seeing Japanese-Americans being forced into internment camps, even the second or third-generation Japanese Americans who only spoke English.

Imagine the US putting Middle-Eastern Americans into internment camps because of 9/11..not very justified though.

Answer 3

Let me begin by saying that I have a family member that was placed in an internment camp. (My sister's mother-in-law)

It was not all Japanese-Americans. Just those living in certain areas on the West Coast.

They were placed there to prevent them from becoming spies.

There was some question about the loyalty of the Japanese families who came here because a small handful still considered the Emperor as "divine".

It was a shameful part of American history that I find dispicable. I'm just explaining the thinking of xenophobic Americans at the time, not defending it.

Also, pragmatically, there were a lot more German and Italian speaking americans than there were japanese speaking americans in the military, so infiltrating those "groups" and monitoring them was a lot easier than inflitrating the Asian groups.

Answer 4

Of course, alien Italians and Germans were interned, together with some citizens who were suspect.

It is true that all West Coast Japanese were interned (a practice begun, btw, in Canada), but it could not have been otherwise, given a long history of Californian resentment, aggravated by the fact that most Japanese immigrants were prosperous, while native-born "Okie" immigrants were not.

Certainly this was unfair -- many of those families lost businesses they had worked long and hard to gain -- but equally unfair would be a comparison with German concentration camps. The internees were well-fed, decently housed, and given educational opportunities; in any case, almost all had been released by 1943. I need not add that many of their sons were part of the most decorated regiment in the Italian campaign.

Answer 5

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, there came to be a mistrust and abuse of Japanese-American citizens especially on the West Coast. With the Japanese seen as a threat to the West Coast , there was the belief there could be spies among the people so they were interred in these camps on the pretext it was for their protection but it was a move on the part of the US as a measure of revenge for Pearl Harbor and our long standing biases against the Asian people as a whole as a race of strong -minded sneaky people.

Answer 6

Was USA justified in taking the Native Americans' land? I don't know but I think that by putting them in camps they saved some of the lives of the Japanese and soldiers that would have had to be pulled from the war effect to protect the Japanese in their homes. I have heard stories of Chinese and Japanese who were killed before the Japanese were moved.

Answer 7

Two main reasons:

One, in 1945, most Japanese-Americans were not American citizens, by choice. They were Japanese citizens, especially the Japanese communities in California, Oregon, and Washington. They were, by the way, the communities that were targeted for internment. They were closest to Japan and could provide aid to the enemy, which in many documented cases, they did. If you were Japanese and lived in Texas, you would probably have not been interred.

Second, it was for their own safety. They were easily identified because of their race, and became easy targets for hate-filled Americans who were constantly losing loved ones throughout the Pacific. For most of the Japanese who were interred, it was quite simply the safest place for them to be at the time.

Answer 8

Because the government was stupid as it is today, A problem witrh a few people of a certain natianlity ment all were bad, even if they had been good honets productive citizens. That and becuse they were not look like the majority so could be singled out

Answer 9

it wasnt all japanese, just the ones on the west coast and they were interned because america believed that they were all spies and were sending info back to japan because they wante to sabatoge america...this happened just a year after pearl harbor...its all pretty stupid if you ask me because only 3% of japanese ended up being any threat to america and according to officials most of them had already been taken to jail so i think its just an excuse america uses for picking on another race

Answer 10

Xenophobia! Anything (or anyone) that looks different is to be feared. Very nicely sung in South Pacific, the musical.