Responsibilities of the United States Government
Versus the Rights of Japanese-American Citizens during World War II
Introduction
Scenes from the life of japanese-americans |
The internment of Japanese-Americans has been called one of the greatest human rights abuses of the American government in the 20th century. Forced to sell almost all of their personal possessions, abandon their livelihoods and businesses, over 110,000 Japanese-Americans became treated as “enemy-aliens” by a nation of which many had called home for generations. These 110,000 were sent to live in a series of secluded, hastily made, and barren “internment camps” for the duration of World War II on account of their ancestry rather than their actions. Amidst a national panic of xenophobia, racism, desperation, greed, and other sentiments of the like, the national government of the United States harshly overstepped its boundaries to strip away the basic rights and freedoms of naturalized and native-born Americans. Through the constitutionally unlawful internment of Japanese-Americans, the United States Government openly defied its responsibilities to defend the basic rights of all Americans, including Americans who happen to be of Japanese descent.
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