Chen 1

Ziying Chen (Camille)

ESL33B
Professor. Carlisi
3 December 2015
The Effects of the Internment on Japanese-Americans during WWII and Their Next Generations
Home is a place where people can feel the warmth from their family and find the security
they need to grow into healthy people. However, the meaning of home will no longer stay the
same when a country is declared war, because people will begin to live with fear. For the purpose
of insuring the control over natural resources in Asia, the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor
in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. That secret attack killed and wounded at least 3,000 Americans.
After the attack from the Japanese, the U.S government immediately decided to join the Second
World War. Many Americans expressed hatred to Japanese-Americans around the United States,
and many people who lived in the West Coast participated in Anti-Japanese Movements after the
bombing on the Pearl Harbor (Japanese-American Internment 1). Within just a few months
into WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized executive order 9066 under the pressure of
majority opinions that suspected and were afraid that the Japanese-Americans were spies sent by
the Japanese government to America with the goal of doing something harmful to the country
(Japanese-American Internment 1). More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans who lived in the
West Coast were forced to move away from their homes and relocate to different internment
camps, which were located at ten specific areas inside of the United States (Nagata et al. 2;
Japanese-American Internment 1).
The internment camp greatly affected the normal life of Japanese-Americans by
compelling them from their houses to live in internment camps. Also, those Japanese-Americans
who were being treated differently by the government, has led to prejudice and accelerated

Chen 2
racism issues that other races had toward Japanese-Americans during the wartime (JapaneseAmerican Internment 1). Although Japanese-Americans tried hard to prove that the internment
action was wrong and they were determined to bring back justice to their own ethnicity, the
action by the government deeply affected many Japanese-Americans internees and have negative
influences on children.
Even though the life in internment camps was not as terrible as the Nazi Concentration
Camps, the life in the internment camps that Japanese-Americans lived was not easy. They
managed to temporarily live in local racetracks or animal pens, which are uninhabitable for
humans (Bell 2; Japanese American Internment during WWII 8). Also, there was a shortage of
facilities, life necessities, and etc. Internees in camps were expected to work for living (JapaneseAmerican during WWII 8). However, internment camps that were built in places that have
serious problem of water shortages, so it made it hard to plant, or produce enough food to feed
the people (See fig.1). (Nagata et al 5; Japanese-American Internment 1). While kids were
studying in school, adults work in factories earning minimum wage or farming down in the
fields. This is an example of a typical day for many Japanese-Americans internees in camps
during WWII (Japanese-American Internment 2)

Chen 3
Fig. 1 Most of the Places that are labeled in black dots were arid areas, which were the
internment camps locations.
Besides the horrible living conditions in the internment camps, Japanese-Americans
werent allowed to have any freedom. Among such large population of internees, nearly two
third of them are legal citizens of the U.S, but they were treated as prisoners instead of citizens in
the camps (Nagata et al 5). Sometimes, their homes were searched without the presence of a
warrant by American soldiers (Japanese American Internment during WWII 7). Barbered wires
were used to surround the whole internment camps to prevent internees from escaping the
camps, and there were also armed soldiers who took turns to check around the camps. If they
found internees that were trying to flee, they will shoot them without any hesitation (JapaneseAmerican Internment 1; Japanese American Internment during WWII 13). Moreover,
internees were not allowed to communicate with outsiders through any communication device
(Japanese American Internment during WWII 6). The civil rights that Japanese-Americans
were supposed to have were violated during the time in the internment camp.
After the order of relocation was given by the president, the Japanese-Americans only
had limited amounts of time to pack what they needed before they head to camps. None of the
internees knew when the war would end nor whether they will ever return to their homes and live
in the same neighborhood again. So many of them chose to sell their houses with very low prices
in order to compete with other Japanese-Americans, who also wanted to sell their houses or
properties in short amount of time (Japanese-American Internment 1; Ina 12). Some of the
internees went through difficult times of accepting the fact that they had to leave their home to
live in the internment camp which caused different levels of depression and stress on them (Ina
14). Moreover, internees who were separated from their family members into different camps

Chen 4
during the time of internment worsen their psychological issues (Japanese American Internment
during WWII 8). In the article Children of the Camp, by Satsuki Ina, the author mentioned a
documentary which showed a diary entry from an interned woman during the war. The woman
wrote, I wonder if today is the day theyre going to line us up and shoot us (qtd in Jenson
1997). Also, there were reports that showed the suicide rate of Japanese-Americans was higher
after the Second World War (Ina 18). Internees were left with no choice but to be living in
uncertainties of their own fate in the internment camp and many of them suffered mental
illnesses because of the internment.
Many of the Japanese-Americans who were the second-generation of JapaneseAmericans, known as Nisei, volunteered to join the army to fight for the United States in the
Second World War (Nagata et al 4; Japanese American Internment during WWII 8-9).
Although many of the Japanese-American soldiers sacrificed their lives to prove their loyalty to
the country in the war, Japanese-Americans were still being labeled as colored people, and
Japanese-American soldiers were being treated differently than other soldiers during the war (Ina
16). Some soldier that survived the Second World War reported that they had experienced posttraumatic stress disorder, and other related symptoms after the war (Ina 3).
After spending a few years living in internment camps, Japanese-Americans were
gradually released back to their homes (Japanese American Internment during WWII 12).
Many of those Japanese-Americans who were interned started to seek for ways to fight and get
their rights back. A few cases were upheld by Japanese-Americans in the U.S Supreme Court to
go against the internment camp action. The case that caught the most attention from people as
well in the society is the Korematsu vs. The United States (Japanese American Internment
during WWII 16; Korematsu vs. The United States). In Korematsu vs. The United States,

Chen 5
Fred Korematsu argued that the action of putting Japanese-Americans citizens into internment
camps during the Second World War was unfair and racist. (Japanese-American Internment 2;
Korematsu vs. The United States). However, the Supreme Court ruled that the executive order
9066 in the year of 1942 was constitutional, because it was under special circumstance
(Korematsu vs. The United States; Japanese American Internment during WWII 11). The
court decision made in this case upset many Japanese-Americans. Some of them are still
reaching out in any possible ways to be involved in the society, and wanted to let their voices
being heard by the majority people.
Until the year of 1978, the Japanese-American Citizen League asked the government to
pay $25,000 to each person who been through the period of internment camp and establish an
educational fund for their next generations (Japanese American Internment during WWII11;
Japanese-American Internment 1). After the investigations of President Jimmy Carter in 1988,
the Congress apologized to those Japanese-Americans who were forced to be in internment
camps for years and rewarded survivors from the internment. Each were given $20,000
(Japanese American Internment during WWII 2; Japanese-American Internment 2). It seems
like the apology and those money offered by the government had proved that JapaneseAmericans were innocent in the America, but the things that they have been through in the
internment camps and the illness they had suffered in result of the internment, as well as the
prejudice they faced from people based on their Japanese heritage will never goes away. It has
imprinted on them and they will not forget that experience. The internment remained as a dark
mark in the American history because of the serious racism issue and violation of civil rights in
U.S citizens (Japanese-American Internment 2).

Chen 6
The different effects on Japanese-American internees, which most of them were Nisei,
the second generation of Japanese immigrants, were not the end of the story. Many years later,
researchers have found that some Sansei, which is defined as the children of the Nisei generation
who were involved in the internment have also been affected in one way or the other (Nagata et
al 3). Studies show that children who are growing up in internment camps have lower selfesteem, and experienced difficulties of assimilating in the United States, as their loves one and
themselves were mistreated in the camps. They also had to witnessed their parents lose their
prides of being the ancestors of Japanese (Nagata et al 3). Children are very fragile both
emotionally and psychologically during their developmental years. Traumatic events like being
interned in racetracks had become part of the unpleasant memories to them (Ina 2). In Chen and
Yus article, Asian North-American Childrens Literature about the Internment: Visualizing and
Verbalizing the Traumatic Thing, the authors raised concerns about the well beings of children
after the experience of internment by analyzing different children literatures that can affect the
way the children deal with traumatic events that happened during their childhood. The article
also provided suggestions on what treatments can be used in order to heal children who have
experienced traumatic events in the past (Chen and Yu). In addition, in Children of the Camp, the
author described a documentary that exposed the effects that the internment have on children.
Children appear to have sense of loss when they have to leave their friends and close family
members (Ina 27). Some children have feelings of being abandoned and can hardly trust people
around them. Also, many of those children are very sensitive to how people defined them from
ethnicities and feel ashamed and wanted to deny their own culture background (Nagata et al 1).
Although the government made apology and helped those internees financially by
compensating them with money, the long-lasting psychological issues due to the internment are

Chen 7
still brothering some of those internees who were younger during that time. The government
should make plan to follow up the mental health of those internees and provide treatments for
those who show obvious symptom related to the internment. Also, the internment was actually
triggered by the discrimination among races, the government should stand a position to go
against any decisions that might increase the tensions of the people in different race. Most
importantly, people need to aware that the color of our skins is not an indicator of whether a
person is good or bad. People need to put themselves in others shoes to understand, as well as
respect the differences of others. Lastly, people should remember the mistake that we made from
the internment to thousands of the Japanese-Americans during the Second World War and to
avoid making the same mistake again in the future.

Chen 8
Works Cited
Bell, Alison. "L.A. THEN AND NOW; Racetrack had Part in Dark Chapter of History;
Santa Anita Housed Japanese Americans before they were sent to Internment
Camps. Los Angeles Times Nov 08 2009. ProQuest. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.
Chen, Fu-jen, and Su-lin Yu. "Asian North-American Childrens Literature about the
Internment: Visualizing and Verbalizing the Traumatic Thing." Children's Literature
in Education 37.2 (2006): 111-124. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Heather Steven, Glen Burnie High, Anne Arundel County Public Schools Japanese
American Internment during World War II. University of Maryland,
Baltimore County. Web. 18 Nov, 2015
Ina, Satsuki. Children of the Camps. Psychotherapy.net. Web. 17 Nov. 2015
Japanese-American Internment. Ushistory.org. U.S History Online Textbook. Web. 17 Nov.
2015.
"Korematsu v. United States." Oyez. Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, n.d. Nov 19,
2015.
Nagata, Donna K., and Trierweiler, Steven J, and Talbot, Rebecca, "Long-Term
Effects of Internment during Early Childhood on Third-Generation Japanese
Americans. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (Wiley-Blackwell)
69.1 (1999): 19. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

Chen 9
Pearl Harbor History: Why Did Japan Attack? Eyewitness Accounts,
Casualty List, Background. Pearlhabor.org. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.