“The only good Jap is a dead Jap.” This was the attitude of a California congressman after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He stated that every returning interned citizen were to be greeted with death. A large part of U.S. History was the Japanese American Internment during the last three years of World War II. The most important topics involved in this topic are the history, the people involved, and the result and outcome.
The main event that led to the eventual internment of American citizens was the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, one of Japan’s greatest naval commanders, devised an extremely risky plan to hopefully disable the U.S. Pacific Fleet in a single strike. He had intentions of trying to force the Americans …show more content…
government started to feel threatened and was worried about the possibilities of Japanese spies in America. On February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. It ordered all people of Japanese descent to be arrested and placed in relocation camps. Executive Order 9066 gave the Secretary of war almost full power against Japanese Americans and anyone else who may be a threat. The U.S. Army was responsible for rounding up the Japanese and placing them in camps. More that 110,000 Japanese Americans were arrested and sent to relocation camps. Around sixty-two percent of them were U.S. citizens. In the fall of 1942 control over the Japanese Interment project had been turned over to a civilian agency call the War Relocation Agency. When people started to take the Japanese Citizens the Army would only give them less than seven days notice. It forced families to sell their properties and possessions at cheaper prices. Executive Order 9066 did not state that nay people of German or Italian descent were to be detained. In the court case Korematsu v. United States the Supreme Court applied “strict scrutiny” to the government orders. Basically, it accepted the military fears that Japanese Americans were all potential