Japanese Internment Camps: Remind You of ANYTHING?

When people in the U.S. are asked to think about WWII and to bring up images in their mind there are definetly a few popular images. The first may be a picture of Hitler giving a speech to thousands of brainwashed Germans. ---------------------->

Another may be of Uncle Sam wanting you for the U.S. Army. This poster is one of the most famous pieces of propaganda in U.S. history. --------------------------------------------------->

You might even remeber the horrific day December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor.---------->

I too would have pictured these heart wrenching images before I saw and learned about the Japanese internment camps. The picture to the right shows a Japanese internment camp that was created to contain the "evil Japs."---------->

To quickly summarize who were we (the U.S.) fighting in WWII. Hitler right? And what was he doing in Germany? He was taking Jews rounding them up and first putting them in ghettos then moving them to concentration camps where millions of innocent Jews were killed. When I saw this image it truly changed my perspective of the U.S. government during the late 1940s. They were fighting a war against a man who decided that he could oppress and annihilate an entire race. Although Hitler's situation in Germany was far more extreme, the Japanese internment camps were not a soft topic. During WWII the U.S. government relocated around 120,000 Japanese Americans. The ironic thing is that nearly two-thirds of these Japanese Americans were American citizens. This relocation was the largest relocation of any nationality throughout U.S. history. I want to make sure that everyone knows I do not think that this and the situation in Germany at this time are equivalent because they are far from it. However there are a few similarities between the two. In both cases a certain group is targeted as dangerous or impure and are forced to leave there homes. If the war continued and more American land was bombed, it is quite likely that the situation could quickly escalate into one similar to Germany. I may sound like a broken record because I often use the word imagine to get my point across, however I feel that it helps the reader truly understand the situation. Imagine your family getting taken away from your house just because of race. Even if you are an American citizen you rights count for nothing and you are sent away to an internment camp. Some described the living space as ''tar paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind.' The spartan facilities met international laws, but still left much to be desired." To conclude, I think it is important to think about these Japanese American Internment camps and how they are similar to Nazi Germany. We must also consider how our government controls situations in the future and that it never classifies an entire race as an "Alien race." Finally, although many important events happened during WWII such as Pearl Harbor, D-Day, V-J Day, and others we must also recognize the smaller events because everything played a key role in the entire realm of WWII.