Bio Essays (830 words) - Japanese American Internment,

Bio The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States was the forced relocation and incarceration during World War II of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese who lived on the Pacific coast in camps in the interior of the country. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizen. The U.S. government ordered the removal of Japanese Americans in 1942, shortly after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Such incarceration was applied unequally due to differing population concentrations and, more importantly, state and regional politics: more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, nearly all who lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. The forced relocation and incarceration has been determined to have resulted more from racism and discrimination among whites on the West Coast, rather than any military danger posed by the J apanese Americans. The case eventually made it to the U.S. Supreme Court; a year earlier, the court had upheld the constitionality of curfews for Japanese-Americans in Yaqui v. United States and Hirabayashi v. United States. The cases served as the foundation for the Korematsu case, with the justices ruling 6-3 to uphold his arrest and internment. A majority of people feel that the Government acted upon the Japanese Canadians unfairly using segregation, discrimination and prejudice, to separate them from the rest of Canada. Many people have observed that even before the war the Government treated the Japanese unfairly, by not granting them citizenship even though they were born there. Many other unfair disadvantages were put upon the Japanese before and during World War II. This is only one side of the story and only one of the many positions that should be looked at. Many other sides, perspectives, and aspects should also be looked at before making judgment on what happened, how it happened and why the Japanese Internment happened. The Canadian Government might have acted fairly upon the Japanese considering the situation, but as said before there are many other sides, perspectives and aspects to the Japanese Internment. This is a situation that has been discussed in the past and will continue to be talked about in the future . The Japanese Internment is a big part of Canada's past, and history. The mistakes of World War II will help Canada grow and learn how to act in similar situations in the future. In a way the Internment has helped Canada a great deal, giving Canada experience, and know after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 federal authorities forced 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry into internment camps, equating ethnicity with collective guilt. More recently and for many years, African Americans, Latinos, and others have complained that they are subject to unwarranted police scrutiny in their cars and on the streets. Their complaints have often been ignored. Throughout its long and torturous history, the practice of racial and ethnic profiling has been a thorn in police-community relations, fostering distrust and tension where trust and cooperation could feasibly prevail. Longstanding practices of profiling notwithstanding, by the mid-1990s but before the events of September 11 police and lawmakers were beginning to acknowledge that racial profiling exists and to condemn it as wrong. The American public, too, was increasingly aware of the existence and inappropriateness of profiling. In 2000, for example, approximately 80 percent of Americans surveyed indicated that they had heard of racial profiling and expressed the opinion that it should be stopped. Reflecting the growing awareness among policy makers and the public, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice began to sue local police departments where it found egregious patterns and practices of racial and ethnic profiling. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shattered the emerging public consensus that racial and ethnic profiling is wrong and should be eliminated. Less than a month after the attacks, a majority of Americans surveyed supported greater scrutiny of Arabs. Indeed, most white, black, and other nonwhite Americans expressed support of profiling of Arabs at airports and of requiring Arabs to carry special identification cards. Although profiling of Arabs and Muslims was a concern before 9/11, its scope