LAD/Blog #35: Home was a Horse Stall

Home was a Horse Stall

Reactions to Sox:

• I think it is really awful that, on top of being executed, the Japanese Americans felt forced to burn everything directly related to their culture, as it could be taken as a threat or a sign of collaboration with the enemy
• Sox's personal story also makes me think about these people were being treated as if they directly betrayed the US, instead of the reality where it was their home country
• I can't imagine living with four other people in a 9- by 20-foot enclosure, even if they were family, and especially in those unsanitary conditions
• Her good fortune as the assistant block manager also reminds me how others were not as fortunate

President Roosevelt's Executive Order: 

• The Executive Order 9066 allowed Roosevelt to establish "military areas" along the West Coast and limit activities of the people in those areas
• The Civilian Exclusion Order No. 27 (two months later) narrowed the focus of these restrictions to "all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien"
• These orders disrupted the lives of 112,000 people, two-thirds of them US citizens
• Evacuation orders were soon posted, and Japanese Americans had to prepare to leave (May 9, 1942 was leaving day)
• The exclusion order was lifted on November 11, 1944

1988 "Repair":

• The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed as an attempt for the government to try to compensate for all of the terror previously conflicted on the Japanese Americans
• With this law, each surviving person received $20,000 as a symbolic reparation for their hardship, and provided compensation for Aleut people of Alaska who were relocated from their homes after a Japanese invasion
• This act also established a fund for educating the public about the internment

The concentration camps of the Holocaust are probably the closest synthesis to the camps in the US in the 1940's.  But for US history, it can be said that slavery was pretty close.  People were trapped working for other people, in filthy conditions, and were greatly mistreated due to the color of their skin (the Japanese Americans were pitted against due to their nationality, even though they were US citizens).