Online Exhibition Essay: A More Perfect Union

At the height of the internment of the Nipponese Americans during World war II, the number of individuals relocated and housed at the internment camps reached a staggering 120,000 individuals.Spread over 10 camps nationwide, that were defined by remoteness and remove from the general social organisation of American society, these people many of which were born American citizens lived their lives under rent and key simply because of their cultural ancestry.Not only men, precisely women, children, and the elderly were categorise as enemy aliens following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Using subject field security system as justification, the U.S. government displaced and imprisoned these Nipponese Americans for 2 years, victorious non only their freedom but their assets as well.Given the information contained in the Smithsonians give awayion, A More Perfect Union, the justification of national security was faulty and played off prejudice sort of than common sense. The Ni pponese migration to Hawaii and the U.S. mainland began in 1861 and continued through to 1940. During this time over 275,000 individuals immigrated. umteen of the introductory generation Japanese who came to the U.S. worked on sugar cane fields in Hawaii and on fruit and veget adapted farms in California. There they open up communities and were able to surround themselves with cultural familiarity but as their population grew, pettishness against them as well as began to grow.Within a couple years of their first arrival, the Hawaii legislator passed laws restricting the immigration of Japanese. By 1907, the U.S. had restricted the travel of Japanese from Hawaii to the mainland. The read nones that by 1940, forty percent of the population of Hawaii owed at least part of their ancestry to Japanese.In California, the Japanese Americans fought similar odds as their persistency and success huffye them easy targets of racially fueled jealousy.The racism against them, how of all t ime, was not limited to the unsuccessful farmer down the road but quite reached into every branch of government. Unable to own land or decease citizens, many Japanese placed their properties in the name of their children who had been born in the U.S. and were therefore citizens.The Supreme Court itself, played on the side of the oppressor, view against Japanese immigrants and upholding racist laws and restrictions.Anti-Japanese propaganda was also common place in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, including bubble gum cards interchange to children and political cartoons, editorials and speeches. Once the Japanese American population established itself as a living and growing community in the United States, the abomination became more concentrated.With the drop of the bomb on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese Americans fate was sealed. Americans had followed the Japanese Armys fight down of Hitler and Mussolini, they were aw atomic number 18 of the army effect. W hat Americans were not prepared for was for that military power to reach across the Pacific and tap them on the shoulder.The exhibit notes that in the panic that ensued along the West Coast, along with the prejudices already in place and made policy, the Japanese Americans became an easy target for political kowtowing and discharge the prejudices which had until then only bubbled. With President Franklin D. Roosevelts issuance of executive identify 9066, the situation exploded into full blown segregation.What is interesting to note, is that though the U.S. was also in a war against Germany and Italy, Italian American and German Americans were not targeted under E.O. 9066, While German or Italian enemies were often viewed as misguided victims of despotic leaders, Japanese people were referred to as yellow vermin, mad dogs, and monkey men. Racist wartime propaganda further exacerbated fears of invasion and prejudice against people of Japanese decent.Much of the political and militar y justification for the removal of Japanese Americans was blatantly fueled by individual racism and not sound strategy. illustration from the West Coast, who had their own individual prejudices against their own Japanese American communities were more or less of the strongest supporters of the measure.The initial roll was for the military to remove persons from their jurisdiction who were seen to be threats to national security but the removal wasnt limited to individuals near line of products bases or the coast but stretched far across the country, uprooting them from their homes and leaving them to dispense only what they could carry. Disobeying the order was not an option nor was it considered correct.Japanese American, Morgan Yamanaka, in recalling her own survive explains that it wasnt in their upbringing to disobey the authority of the federal government, I think one has to appreciate what our parents, the immigrant parents taught us Always respect order coming from the people above you. Respect your teachers, respect the government, respect the law.Be obedient, be reserved, be a good Japanese according to good Japanese traditions. Though I doubt it was willing, there was little protest on the part of the Japanese Americans. However, perhaps this loyalty and obedience to the U.S. government patronage the criminal nature of E.O. 9066, was also a factor in the excerption of spirit and their reemergence back into American society following the camps.The camp bugger off though far less extreme, despite the designation of internment rather than the Nazi concentration camps, did not differ so much from the Jews experiences in Germany during the comparable time.Fenced in by barbed wire and soldiers with guns, their were housed in lacking(p) barracks and worked for minimal wages to help support the camp and war effort. Many used their opportunities at work as ways to continue their lives tabudoor(a) the context of the camp, while remaining imprisoned .The things which occupied their time such as artwork and making of furniture, the expression of their freedom through imagination are what I would most recommend to someone viewing the exhibit. The works, though deeply disturbing in the recurrence of the fences and general feeling of entrapment present in some, shows a freedom that no imprisonment can stifle.While the body is imprisoned, the learning ability continues to go forth into the world even if it is only a recoloring of the same landscape, dusty and isolated. To maintain artistic expression under such custody is a true show of the strength needed to survive nice an unknowing enemy.By 1943, the U.S. government was asking all residents of the camp to fill out a drumheadnaire to determine their loyalty to the U.S. Some, feeling tricked and manipulated by the maneuver and the questions on the forms, chose to reply no to certain questions, such as Will you rely unqualified dedication to the United States and forswear any f orm of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?The exhibit explains that some of the interned Japanese Americans saw the question as a double edged sword. If they were to answer yes, than they would be implying that they had ever been disloyal to the U.S. government and to answer no was to seal their fate. The ones who were deemed loyal were able to start on the road back to a normal life, the others were separate further.Among these were children and natural born U.S. citizens. At the end of the war, over 4,000 Japanese Americans (all but 100 under the age of 20) were repatriated to Japan.