Japanese Concentration Camps

Japanese Concentration Camps

During WWII, Roosevelt signed the executive order that rounded up Americans of Japanese heritage. Roosevelt's executive order was fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment among farmers who competed against Japanese labor, politicians who sided with anti-Japanese constituencies, and the general public, whose frenzy was heightened by the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. More than 2/3 of the Japanese who were interned in the spring of 1942 were citizens of the United States.

The conditions of the camp were overcrowded and also poor living conditions, according the report by the War Relocation Authority, was that the J.A were housed in tarpaper-covered barracks with out and cooking or plumbing facilities at all. Food was rationed at the cost of 48 cents, leadership in the camps were given to Nisei who were the younger American born Japanese, while the older generation which was called Issei did not gain positions while the government ignored them, yet people were allowed to leave the camps only if the enlisted in the U.S army.

The legal issues that were brought upon the us were only concerning the interment in the camps by the defendants arguing that their 5th amendment right was being violated because of their heritage but although they fought hard, the supreme court ruled in favor of the U.S Gov. By the end of 1944, a few years after signing the Executive order 9066 Roosevelt took away the order and closed the camps and the last camp was closed at the end of 1945, many apologies were given.