1. American Foreign Policy
L10: World War Two - Part Two
American Foreign Policy
Agenda
Objective:
To understand the causes and experiences of Japanese Internment
To understand the centrality of Japanese Interment in the war against Japan.
Schedule:
Lecture, Discussion, Image and Video Analysis
Homework:
Reading on the Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb Due (G: Thurs 5/8; Y: Tues 5/13)
Civic Literacy: Last Day Tues 6/10
Facilitation Prep (Misc Dates)

2. Our Study of World War Two
Pearl Harbor (Causes)
Treatment of Japanese Americans
America in Combat
The Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

3. The United States Enters World War Two December 1941
Pearl Harbor is bombed on December 7, 1941
United States declares war on Japan December 8, 1941

4. Executive Order 9066
Presidential Executive order issued by Franklin Roosevelt authorizing the Secretary of War to designate certain areas of the United States as exclusion zones from which “any or all persons may be excluded.”
Soon, 110,00-120,000 people of Japanese heritage who lived on the West Coast were put into relocation camps

6. Who Is Interned?
West Coast Residents (California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona)
Only Japanese Americans living in Hawaii were interned, despite making up a third of the Hawaiian population
Most were second or third generation Japanese-Americans
62% American citizens
50% children

11. What Was Life Like in the Camps
Families had two days to pack and could only bring what they could carry
Families typically were able to stay together
Housed in barracks
Used communal areas of washing, laundry, and eating
Property was edged with barbed wire, and protected by armed guards
Camps were located in remote, desolate areas

24. Racism Wartime Hysteria Failure of Leadership Economic Motives
Causes of Internment
Racism
Wartime Hysteria
Failure of Leadership
Economic Motives

25. Racism There was deep racism in America in the 1940s…
Jim Crow, Segregated Military, Immigration Quotas
There was considerable anti-Japanese racism (particularly in California)
Japanese Exclusion League of California
Japanese immigrants denied the right to become naturalized citizens (Takao Ozawa v. United States 1922)
Covenants against renting or selling homes to Asians were common in California
Laws banning marriage between whites and Japanese
Segregated schools between white and Japanese Americans
Myth of the “yellow peril”
Japanese immigrants were described as an invading horde who lowered the standard of living for white workers
They were accused of being dirty, unhealthy, and unable to assimilate

30. Bugs Bunny Cartoon

31. Wartime Hysteria
False reports of spying and sabotage by Japanese Americans, combined with racial prejudices, led to feelings of hate towards Japanese Americans following the attack at Pearl Harbor.
A variety of false reports were printed in the media stating that Japanese-Americans aided at Pearl Harbor or were spying on Americans, etc.
To the right, is a false story published in 1942

32. Failure of Leadership
Roosevelt ignored reports from Naval Intelligence, the FBI, and other sources that there was no need for mass removal or incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry
Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of internment in Korematsu v. United States 1944

33. Economic Motives
"We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons and we might as well be honest. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men," wrote Frank J. Taylor in the Saturday Evening Post.
Groups that competed with Japanese immigrant farmers and laborers lobbied for internment

34. The American Government’s Take on Japanese Internment

35. Discussion
Recall the following diagram…What is the role of Japanese Interment in this process?
How does it grow out of Pearl Harbor?
How might it contribute to the decision to drop the atomic bomb?
Boycott/Embargo of Japan
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
Japanese Internment
Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb

36. Epilogue January 1945, internment is ended
Freed internees were given $25 and a bus ticked to their former homes
In 1983 the United States government issued a report which said that internment was unjust and militarily unjustified and had been motivated largely by racism
In 1992, all living internees received a $20,000 reparation payment