Japanese American Citizen Book Review

Japanese American Citizen Book Review

The Japanese internment camps during the 1940s are often likened to the United States' version of concentration camps. This period of time was one that allowed fear to win in regards to national security. Already targets of immigration quotas and systematic violence and racism, Japanese Americans were the victims of this skeleton in domestic policy during the 1940s. The hypocritical United States was liberating the Jewish people Nazi Germany, but was sending its own citizens, with Japanese heritage, to camps of its own. This stark comparison of two developed and "civilized" countries committing similar crimes to their own citizens presents the question of how and why the United States government sponsored the internment of Japanese Americans. ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...Through their support of the executive, legislative and judicial branches, this process with fully enforced; therefore Japanese Americans had no choice but to comply despite the obvious violations against their rights. Japanese Americans economically lost their rights because they had to sell their possessions and leave their homes, businesses and jobs. At control centers, families and individuals were registered with numbers, yet another comparison to the Germans use of serial numbers to identify their Jewish population. In Citizen by Miné Okubo, she illustrates the idea that these internment camp prisoners could show for their lives is what they could carry. While the number their luggage is used to match it to the correct family, in the illustration it could be argued that the tags dehumanize the Japanese Americans and likened them to their luggage. Continuing with the contrast of the Holocaust, the United States government then "herded [Japanese Americans] into 171 special trains, 500 in each train." In subsequent illustrations, Okubo shows the poor living conditions while living in the camps. Contained in one of the ten possible internment camps, Japanese Americans could expect to live in barracks with small living quarters, with a "military–like routine." Many, if not all, Japanese Americans, felt as if they had lost their freedom, which included their political status and rights. Some Japanese Americans died in

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