Internment and Misinformation
The Japanese internment is regarded today as one of the most devastating events in American history. Even today, many question how such an event could have taken place. It is easy for modern Americans to claim that they would ‘never have supported the internment’, but the only way to understand how a country could so cruelly persecute an entire community, one must understand the attitudes, fears, and misconceptions of the public. The American government during World War II used propaganda and misinformation to manipulate the public into supporting internment.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1942, President Roosevelt drafted Order 9066, which called for ‘exclusion zones.’ This was the idea that military personnel could ‘exclude’ anyone from any area. Thus was born the internment camps. Around 120,000 Japanese, 62% of whom were US citizens, were forced into the camps (“Japanese American Internment”, 2006) on the basis that they posed a risk to national security (“Densho”, 2006). Even more surprising is that half of these ‘inmates’ were children. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire and military guards, and the Japanese inside them were considered prisoners. President Roosevelt himself called the camps’ inhabitants ‘inmates.’ “Many families lived in horse stalls under unsanitary conditions, often by open sewers. Others occupied hastily constructed barracks. Toilet and bathing facilities were communal and devoid of privacy” (“Exploring Japanese-American Internment”, 2002). Many people even died within the camps as a result of inadequate or nonexistent medical care.
What is perhaps most disturbing about the camps is that Americans had full knowledge that the Japanese were being held. “It was announced in the newspapers that they were being moved inward,” says Sharon Carroll, a resident of Indianapolis at the time. “In 1941 I was only 12, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t know. Kids were more protected from things going on in those days. By the Japanese attacking, this wave of hate swept the country. When we heard about internment we didn’t think there was anything wrong with that because we though they were all terrible.”
(at left: an example of anti-Japanese propaganda)
The US’s weapon of choice against the Japanese was misinformation. “We thought they were all sympathetic with what Japan had done. There were reports that they had submarines and spies everywhere. We thought they would attack again at any time.”
In fact, it seems that hate for the Japanese was encouraged by the media. Carroll recalls many films being released to movie theatres featuring evil Japanese characters. “There was so much propaganda. There was never a good [Japanese] person in those movies. We were put into this mood that they were all terrible.” Posters intended to boost morale featured sinister, scheming ‘Japs’ slitting American throats and raping American women (“Anti-Japanese Propaganda”, slides 3, 4, and 5). (Below: an example of propaganda.)
Racism against the Japanese existed even in Indiana, a state with a very small Asian population. “At that time things were pretty segregated. I never met an Oriental person. They really weren’t in the interior.” The closest large concentration of Japanese was in Chicago, which experienced an influx of 6,599 Japanese-American migrants after the interment (“Japanese Internment”, 2006). Many Japanese families moved inland to avoid persecution.
The Japanese seem to be the only ethnicity that was truly affected by war-time enmity. Germans and Italians within the States did not experience anything like the racism that plagued the Japanese community, despite being at odds with US forces during World War II . “For some reason people seemed to think that the Italians were sort of laughable,” Carroll remembers. “I didn’t really know any German people, but I don’t remember anyone being particularly racist. It was mostly just the Japanese.” Even African-Americans, who had previously been degraded and discriminated against in every way, were being largely accepted by the public. The nation needed workers “of any color” (“Back Home in Indiana”, 2006), a sentiment which was reflected by the practice of drafting Japanese internment prisoners (“The Japanese Internment”, 2004). Some camps had over 1100 enlisted prisoners (“The Camps”, 1996).
It was not until the war had ended that Americans began to feel remorse for their actions. “A lot of those anti-Japanese sentiments lingered until well after it [World War II] was over,” Carroll says. In 1988, 60,000 Japanese-American internment survivors were paid reparations of $20,000 each, a paltry sum compared to the torture and humiliation of their imprisonment (“Japanese Interment in World War II”, 2006).
In a time when morale was supposed to be at an all-time high, it is dumbfounding that such an even could have occurred against American citizens with the blessings of the government. While White America has moved on, and prejudices against the Japanese are no more or less than any other minority, it is still difficult to comprehend or forget about the internment.
Works Cited
“Anti-Japanese Propaganda.” Slides 3 and 5.
<http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vnguyen/pages/antijapanese_files/frame.htm>.
“Back Home in Indiana.” 2005. Indiana State Historical Society. 18 April 2006.
< http://www.in.gov/ism/MuseumExhibits/WWII/backHome.asp>.
Carroll, Sharon. Personal Interview. May 2006
“Densho.” 2006. Causes of the Internment. 7 May 2006.
“Exploring Japanese-American Internment.” 2002. Asian American Media.
20 April 2006 <http://www.asianamericanmedia.org/jainternment/>
Internment History.” 1999. PBS.org. 20 April 2006
<http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/index.html>.
“Japanese Internment in World War II.” 2006. Asian Pacific American Heritage.
20 April 2006 <http://www.infoplease.com/spot/internment1.html>.
“Japanese American Internment.” 20 April 2006. Wikipedia. 21 April 2006
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_internment>.
“Japanese Internment.” 2006. American Diaspora. 21 April 2006
< http://www.epodunk.com/top10/diaspora/japanese-internment-camps.html>.
“The Camps.” 1996. The Japanese American Internment. 7 May 2006.
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8420/camps.html>.
“The Japanese Internment.” 2004. The Free Information Society. 6 May 2006
<http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=35>.
By: Erin Cohenour