In most situations, life can be difficult for foreigners immigrating to a new country. With everything from language barriers, to animosity from some native born citizens of that country, to competition for jobs, it isn't easy. And if this is added to by a catastrophic event, caused by people of the same race or ethnicity as you, or even worse, an event organized by the government of the country you or your predecessors came from, assimilation won't be the easiest thing in the world.
But something that makes the situation faced by Japanese-Americans somewhat more unique was the institutional discrimination that also resulted from Pearl Harbor.
[...] In 1942, President Roosevelt instituted United States Executive Order 9066, which ordered the relocation and internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, mainly those living in the western United States. Although the Japanese were not alone as far as the internment went (many Americans of German and Italian ancestry were also interned), they made up the majority, outnumbering the Italians and Germans combined by more than one hundred thousand. Roosevelt wrote in Executive Order 9066 that the reason for his allowing these ethnically based internments and relocations was because the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities However, forty- six years later, Congress and President Reagan recognized that this wasn't the true reasoning behind the actions of Roosevelt and the federal government: The Congress recognizes that, as described in the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II. [...]
[...] As the excerpt shows, as can be expected, there were many cases of more and more animosity towards Japanese people sprouting up in America. But anyone could see this coming. The same thing has happened many times in history, whether it was anti-Arabic sentiment after the 9/11 attacks, anti-Spanish sentiment after the sinking of the USS Maine, or anti-white sentiment after the Rodney King beating, generalized groups can often be resented because of something caused something a few members of that group have done. [...]
[...] The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, several radio news people conducted man-on-the-street interviews, asking many people their views on the attack, the possibility of war, and other issues. Here is an excerpt from one of these interviews: There's hate in my heart. What's in me, what's in my veins. I'm gonna kill, slaughter those Nazi ones if I come across a wounded one, wouldn't interest me. I'd kill my own father if he dared fight against this country. [...]
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