The past week, my government class was given a project. This project involved identifying several decisions made by American presidents concerning problems facing the nation. These included the Cuban Missile Crisis, the deployment of troops in Iraq, and the topic of this thread: The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 [http://www.poetryvideos.com/images/evacproc.gif]. What this Order entailed was the relocation of all Japanese-Americans along the West Coast to "internment camps", in an effort to separate them from aircraft manufacturing plants and ports.
These were not, at all, like concentration camps or gulags. Rather, they served the sole purpose of keeping those people away from society. They were provided with housing, food, medical facilities, and they were housed with their families. Still, these were basically prisons, no matter how you look at them. They were given less then 24 hours to gather their belongings, and sold whatever they did not need, including their houses, for disgustingly low prices. Anyone who resisted was thrown in jail. Years later, however, the government payed each person who was sent to the camps a compensation of $20,000, and many of the internees are willing to forgive the government and forget the situation.
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Ok, enough of the history lesson. The camps themselves are not what I want to talk about. Rather, I want to discuss the disturbing lack of information about them.
Like any project, it required research. Research from 2 books and one website, to be precise.
The librarian provided books about the presidents who were in office at the time, and out of 4 books about FDR, only one had any information concerning the camps. The books were not biographies, but detailed the issues facing the Roosevelt administration, and how they were resolved. Order 9066 was not mentioned in 3 of them.
Are you shocked? Not surprised at all? What's your opinion on the whole situtation?
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 [http://www.poetryvideos.com/images/evacproc.gif]. What this Order entailed was the relocation of all Japanese-Americans along the West Coast to "internment camps", in an effort to separate them from aircraft manufacturing plants and ports.
These were not, at all, like concentration camps or gulags. Rather, they served the sole purpose of keeping those people away from society. They were provided with housing, food, medical facilities, and they were housed with their families. Still, these were basically prisons, no matter how you look at them. They were given less then 24 hours to gather their belongings, and sold whatever they did not need, including their houses, for disgustingly low prices. Anyone who resisted was thrown in jail. Years later, however, the government payed each person who was sent to the camps a compensation of $20,000, and many of the internees are willing to forgive the government and forget the situation.
____________________________________________________________________________
Ok, enough of the history lesson. The camps themselves are not what I want to talk about. Rather, I want to discuss the disturbing lack of information about them.
Like any project, it required research. Research from 2 books and one website, to be precise.
The librarian provided books about the presidents who were in office at the time, and out of 4 books about FDR, only one had any information concerning the camps. The books were not biographies, but detailed the issues facing the Roosevelt administration, and how they were resolved. Order 9066 was not mentioned in 3 of them.
Are you shocked? Not surprised at all? What's your opinion on the whole situtation?
