Pearl Harbor

Most camps were very hard to live in. People had small houses that could have anywhere from 1 to 3 families living in them. Most camps had very little food that was given out to people in very small amounts for 48 cents per meal. Because of this, many people were malnourished.

When they were brought to the camps, they could only bring what they were wearing and what they could carry. Many lost possessions and many could not keep their homes or farms.

Compared to POW Treatment

Nobody was tortured in the US camps where Japanese people were held during the war. Nobody was beaten to death, nor were they forced to work as slave labour. Nobody was executed for being "lazy". Nobody went blind from vitamin deficiency, or lost a leg to gangrene.

The American, British, Canadian, Australian, and Indian soldiers who were prisoners of the Japanese government WERE beaten to death, and starved to death, and worked to death, and so were the civilian women and children that were also captured by the Japanese army. The difference in treatment was huge and the number of western POWS who died in Japanese camps was a disgrace.

And here is more input:

• I don't recall ever hearing that anyone was close to starving in the "camps"; sounds like an exaggeration. However, these internment camps were surrounded by barbed-wire fences and guard towers. There were armed guards. The barracks were hastily-constructed tar-paper covered structures with multiple families assigned to live together with no privacy. Meals were eaten in mess halls. Toilet facilities were in a separate building, with no partitions between them. Yes, if you're going to compare prison camps, conditions for the Japanese-Americans during WWII were not as bad. They made the best of their forced situation by trying to create a sense of normalcy with sports and dances for the kids. But the American government had every reason to make apologies to the internees, many of whom were US citizens deprived of their legal rights. Many lost their homes and businesses. Higher education and career paths were interrupted or abandoned due to the circumstances. They were looked upon as traitors in their own country, where not even a single incident of treason was found to be committed by Japanese Americans.
• 62% of the people held in the Japanese concentration camps were United States Citizens. They were not soldiers sent to our country to kill us unlike the people held in internment camps in Japan. You can try to deny this fact but they definitely weren't there to serve them milk and cookies.

  The United States government actions were un-American and more importantly unconstitutional, regardless of the ruling of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

• They internees did have small portions, but the only reason people died was of poor sanitation and lack of the proper nutrients in the food.
• While the living conditions were austere, the Japanese Americans certainly were not treated inhumanely in respect to food. In fact they were allowed to eat in dining halls spread out within their blocks, and they were even allowed to utilize more than one dining facility if they desired. In respect to the above writers contention that 48 cents per meal was near starvation levels one needs to consider that in 1942 $19 per month was considered a pretty fair wage and that a good breakfast in a restaurant cost 35 cents. Every Japanese Internee was offered a job if they could work and room and board were not taken out of their wages. Every camp had a hospital which was on par with hospitals located in combat to soldiers and sailors, so the contention that internees expired due to lack of medical attention is also meritless. These facilities were so good in fact that local municipalities competed for their equipment at the end of the war. When one attempts to make a comparison with the conditions that Americans and other national lived under in both the German and Japanese POW camps abroad is not a feasable argument either and cheapens the suffering of the Holocaust by a wide margin.
• There is always the condition of not being able to become a doctor, of not being able to fullfill your dreams. And once those camps were done, there were still the ramifications of being a Japanese American, of not having been trusted as loyal. The condition of the camps was still the condition of being trapped someplace, imprisoned without having comitted a crime. Whether other people suffered more or not, doesn't mean that it wasn't suffering to be ripped away from your friends and school and home. FDR had good reasons, that doesn't mean that it was fair to these Americans.
• It is true that during the war, a number of Japanese-Americans could not get livesaving medical care because they were not transported to hospitals outside the camps. They could not visit their families in other camps, and had little or no contact with non-Japanese friends. Although the camps did serve to reduce bloodshed from racial incidents, the internees were essentially deprived of control over their own lives for up to 4 years. The wartime propaganda campaign deemed all Japanese to be not just un-American, but inhuman, and this was reinforced by wartime atrocities. However, as shown by the combat valor of Japanese-American soldiers, the families of these immigrants were just as loyal as German-Americans and Italian-Americans.

The plan was to knock out the US Pacific Fleet as a significant fighting force, so their would be no opposition to Japan's conquest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. They thought that once they had conquered all that territory that we would be unable to dislodge them from it even if we did rebuild the fleet.

The Economic Basis for the Attack

Japan already faced a US oil embargo, part of an international movement to isolate Japan economically, and thus force them to withdraw from China. Primarily the US plan was to cut off credit to the Japanese which would prevent them from being able to purchase petroleum. Japan received petroleum (an absolutely vital economic and military commodity, then as it is now) from three sources: The US, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and Burma (controlled by the British in the 1940's).

Japan would not accept a withdrawal from the Chinese war and instead began planning a first strike against the US Navy. Eliminating or reducing the American naval forces in the Pacific would make the Japanese navy paramount, and thus Japan would be able to ignore the economic consequences of the US ultimatum. After eliminating the US Navy, Japan planned to occupy the Dutch East Indies and Burma, thus gaining control of enough oil to run their military and economy.

The strike on Pearl Harbor did exactly as was hoped by the Japanese. The US battleship fleet was crippled. The Dutch lacked forces to repel the Japanese. The British navy (as ordered by Churchill) sent forces to defend their areas but these were totally inadequate for the job, and were decimated quickly. Japan occupied all the oil-producing areas and settled down to a war of attrition against the US, which they hoped would wear down the US politically and enable them to keep their conquests. The flaw was that they did not find the US aircraft carriers, the counter to those of Japan, and that they left Pearl Harbor's repair and construction facilities only partly damaged. Soon the fleet was repaired, and the US aircraft carriers proved their worth, sinking three of the Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway.

Expectations of the Japanese for the Attack

The Japanese were expecting their results of the attack cripple the U. S. Pacific Fleet for a period of up to eighteen months, preventing aggressive action against imperial forces, with the fleet to later be drawn out into a final battle and destroyed. The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the US Navy and Air force so they could proceed in conquering China. The Japanese believed that if they were successful in destroying US ships and aircraft, they would then have enough time to complete the conquest of China and the western Pacific islands.

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Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in a gamble to knock America out of a future war their military government knew was inevitable, given strong American disagreement to their actions of taking over East Asia (and the atrocities performed there such as the "Rape of Nanking"). Through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japan did not hope to defeat America, only to gain enough time to dominate the Pacific, a strategic advantage America could not easily overcome.

This failed, however, as the two aircraft carriers were on routine maneuvers, and so were not destroyed in the attack. This led to the eventual downfall of the Japanese Empire.

There are many reasons as to why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor but there is only one major reason, which has to do with American intervention in Japanese affairs. One of these was where the U.S. prohibited exports of steel, scrap iron and fuel to Japan because of the takeover of northern Indochina. Another reason was when Japan took over the rest of Indochina and the US once again took action. This time they made oil unavailable to the Japanese, making both their air force and navy completely useless. Because of all of this invention by America, the Japanese military decided that they had to get rid of the Pacific fleet because the Americans would surely intervene and cause them more trouble. Once this was done they could start their war plan to take over Burma, Malaya, the East Indies, and the Philippines.

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It is also worth mentioning that both America and Japan had joined the war effort on rival sides prior to Pearl Harbor, though America had not of course declared war. Japan signed a mutual defensive pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 and the Lend-Lease Act tied America to the Allies from March 1941.

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America had been declaring neutrality since World War I as that war was so devastating that citizens wanted to just stay out of world affairs. Yet America was still a superpower and a threat to the Axis powers (Japan, Germany, etc.) At the time, Japan was one of the largest naval powers if not the most powerful. About the only country that Japan had anything to worry about was America, who was still not involved officially in the war. America at this time was tettering on the edge of entering the war so Japan had the plan to attack first and destroy our naval fleet quickly. Hence the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Japan is dependent on trade. Japan is an island and needs raw materials. The US used to trade oil and many other things Japan's economy needed. When the war started, the US closed it's trade with Asia. Japan was desperate. They need raw materials. Because the US threatened to cut of their supply of raw materials, Japan wanted to prevent the US from further interference.

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With the US taking sides in Europe but not yet officially in the war, Japan decided to attack the US before it was prepared. The US Navy posed a severe threat to the Japanese conquest of the western Pacific.

The thinking at the time was that the Pacific War would culminate in a decisive battle between the Japanese and US Navies. Japanese leaders recognized the potential of the US war machine and decided to stage an attack on Pearl Harbor, with the goal of reducing the Pacific Fleet's capability to wage war and to delay or weaken any US offensive. Although the attack was a significant risk, the Japanese naval leaders such as Admiral Yamamoto believed the risks were necessary if Japan were to succeed in avoiding US intervention in Asia.
Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

The primary reason for Japan's attack (on the US, the British Empire & the Dutch) was the Japanese Army's obsession with their on-going brutal conquest of China. The United States had been taking diplomatic and economic steps against Japan for several years to convince (or force) the Japanese to end their war of conquest in Asia. The Japanese Army actually controlled the Japanese Government since the early 1930's. The Japanese Army refused to end its war of conquest & extreme brutality in China.

Beyond China, the Japanese Army had plans to take advantage of the weakness of the British, French, Dutch & Soviet Union in Asia because of Hitler's conquests in Europe. The Japanese wanted to be free of American interference, and create a vast Asian empire that would have eventually included China, eastern Siberia, Mongolia, Korea, Formosa, Indo-China, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, & New Guinea; and possibly India.

The Japanese military thought that the best way to keep the United States from interfering in their plans in Asia, was to deliver a surprise attack on various US bases throughout the Pacific to do as much damage to the US military capability in the Pacific. At Pearl Harbor, they intended to sink as many battleships, cruisers & aircraft carriers as possible. At Manila they intended to follow-up with an invasion and capture of the Philippines. At Wake Island they intended to seize the island. The Japanese also attacked the bases, ships & troops of the British Empire. All this was intended to persuade the United States & Britain to negotiate a settlement giving the Japanese most of the western Pacific territories, and most of Asia. They hoped that the US & Britain would not want to fight a prolonged & costly war in Asia to liberate what territory the Japanese could capture in the first six months of the war.
They did it to secure control of East Asia before US could respond.
to get to the other side