In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized Japanese-American internment. Milton S. Eisenhower who narrated a historical video during that time told us, "We know that some among them were potentially dangerous . . . no one knew what would happen among these concentrated populations if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores. Military authority therefore determined that all of them-citizens and aliens alike-would have to move." (Ella YouTube). About 100,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States were moved to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Of those interned, 62% were American citizens (Ella YouTube).
One U.S. citizen, Toyosuboro (Fred) Korematsu, who was arrested for not complying with one of the military orders, appealed his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court-and lost. For forty years, Korematsu fought to clear his name. In 1984 a federal court acknowledged that Korematsu had been unjustly treated and reversed his conviction (Korematsu 355). Koremastu's lawyers argued that executive order 9066 was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing "equal protection of the laws," and the fact that the Japanese were detained without a hearing or a trial was a violation of the Fifth Amendment for "without due process of law" (McGleish YouTube). Although I believe internment of the Japanese was legally wrong and unfair, I think it was necessary for the protection of America.
After the Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, everything and everyone related to Japanese became despicable. John Okada wrote a fiction novel, "No-No-Boy." In his fiction he writes about a professor who struggled with making eye contact with his Japanese student. Okada also mentions a character named Herman Fine who was a Jew. Fine calls the Japanese "a shifty lot.
