Examine the possible reasons for the wartime evacuation of Japanese Americans

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Racism cannot be ignored as an explanation. Japanese Americans were placed in camps, but German Americans and Italian Americans were largely ignored. Many of those whose decisions brought about the evacuation were of German and Italian ancestry. The fact was that the Japanese were expendable. Placing them in camps posed no hardship for the rest of society, and, in fact, other Americans profited by their misfortune. That Japanese Americans were evacuated because they were seen as expendable is evident from the decision not to evacuate Hawai'i's Japanese. In Hawai'i, the Japanese were an integral part of the society; removing them would have destroyed the islands economically.

Documents recently unearthed show that government officials saw the Japanese Americans collectively as enemy aliens and that it would not be possible to determine loyalty of individual people. According to the thinking at the time, government leaders felt the "cultural traits" of the Japanese prevented outsiders from telling who was loyal and disloyal.

Some people argue that the Japanese lack of resistance made internment possible. This seems a weak effort to transfer guilt—to blame the victim. In the 1960s, some Sansei and Yonsei were concerned about the alleged timidity of their parents and grandparents when faced with evacuation orders. However, many evacuees, if not most, probably did not really believe what was happening. "It just cannot be that bad," they may have thought. At worst, the evacuees can be accused of being naive. But even if they did see clearly how devastating the order would be, there were no alternatives open to them.