Why were Internment camps set up for Japanese Americans?

Answer 1

Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the US west coast were placed in internment camps on the claim that spies and sabatouers could be hiding among them.

Since Japanese and Japanese Americans living in Hawaii and in the US east of the Mississippi were not forced into camps, and since no American citizens of German or Italian descent were placed in internment camps, the actual reason is more likely related to racial stereotypes and anti-Japanese hysteria.

Answer 2

Because congress and the Americans feared the Japanese Americans were helping those in Japan, so they wanted to round up all the Japanese Americans to keep and eye on them. Short answer: fear of treason

Answer 3

Rumors spread about Japanese aliens assisting Japanese troops in California. There were fears of a Japanese attack on California.
After Pearl Harbor (the attack) the US government believed that spies played a part in the attack (as they actually did). And fearing more attacks the Government sent Japanese Americans to camps called internment camps. This was nothing like concentration camps in WW2, these camps were built to keep them from passing on information to the Japanese Government and military. People were provided basic space and basic food and were (if im correct) still protected by law. They still mad many of the rights they ordinarily had. It is an interesting topic.

Answer 4

Answer 1

During World War II, the United States feared that Japanese and German-Americans would retaliate against the U.S, so they put the citizens into interment camps. At the time, most Japanese and German-Americans sympathized with the Allies, rather than the Axis, however they were still put in the camps.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, racism was a huge part of United States history and Blacks were not the only race to suffer unequal and prejudicial treatment. Asian-Americans did not become accepted as "true Americans" until the mid-1960s. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, many Americans saw the Japanese-Americans as a fifth column. This meant that they viewed the Japanese-Americans as secret spies for Japan and inherently disloyal to the United States.

Contrary to Answer 1, German-Americans were actually mostly against US joining the Allies. Strangely, from a modern perspective, German-American Citizens, Irish-American Citizens, and Italian-American Citizens, who were much more vociferous opponents of US military policy in World War II were not even considered for discriminatory treatment, showing that this boils down to racism and fear of Asians more than it does legitimate security concerns. Only German and Italian non-citizens were rounded up and in far smaller numbers during the war.

In order to deal with this perceived loyalty, the President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. This order was used to round up Japanese-Americans all along the Pacific coast (the largest area of Japanese-Americans in the United States) and place them in internment camps. In 1944, the US Supreme Court upheld the validity of the camps on the grounds of necessary military action. Surprisingly, the Japanese-American response was not to riot or protest, but to actively seek to assist the United States military in World War II. To "prevent" the Japanese-Americans from being in contact with other Japanese, most Japanese-American units were sent to the Italian Front, where some of them earned the highest amounts of commendations and medals. After the war, the Japanese-Americans were released from the camps without any property of money from which to make a living. However, many of them were resourceful and able to sustain themselves in the following decades.

In the 1980s, the US Federal Government admitted its wrongdoing and compensated every family that still had a surviving member from the internment camps for this violation of their civil liberties.