Executive Order 9066

Paper Summary:

This essay examines the events leading up to, surrounding and following the issuance of Executive Order 9066 in U.S. history. The fear of Japanese in the United States prior to and during World War II is explained, followed by the rationale for discrimination against these individuals by the government. Conditions in the internment camps into which Japanese Americans were forced is examined, relying heavily on first-person accounts from survivors of the internment camps.

From the Paper:

"If the removals were inhospitable, the trip to the camps was even more discomfiting. The camps themselves were desolate, through remote portions of the western United States-Arizona, California, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho; what one scholar has called "some of the most uninhabitable parts of the interior of our continent" (Thornton 2002, p. 100). These sparsely populated areas became military installments whose sole purpose was to house Japanese Americans for no reason other than a threat perceived by their entire race; "by midsummer 1942, everyone was behind barbed wire" (Spickard 108). In all, well over 100,000 Japanese Americans-as many as three fourths of whom were United States citizens-were forced to leave their homes for incarceration in these camps for no other reason than their ethnicity (Persico 2001, p. 168, Thornton 2002, p. 100)."

More papers on Executive Order 9066:

• Research Paper # 74543 : "Internment of Japanese Americans "
• Essay # 67204 : "Japanese American Internment Camps"
• Analytical Essay # 30044 : "WWII Japanese Internment"

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