all this talk about how you would have treated jews during the holocaust. lets talk about how you would have treated japanese americans during WWII
hell, let's talk about whether you even know what happened to Japanese Americans, German Americans, or Italian Americans during WWII
Japanese Americans were treated the worst, you will not be shocked to find out!
120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast were placed in internment camps for up to four years. Half of them were kids.
Most were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens. They were stuck, "without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards."
Almost 50 years later, through the efforts of leaders and advocates of the Japanese American community, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Popularly known as the Japanese American Redress Bill, this act acknowledged that "a grave injustice was done" and mandated Congress to pay each victim of internment $20,000 in reparations.
...Despite this redress, the mental and physical health impacts of the trauma of the internment experience continue to affect tens of thousands of Japanese Americans. Health studies have shown a 2 times greater incidence of heart disease and premature death among former internees, compared to noninterned Japanese Americans.
The [War Relocation Authority (WRA)] tried to run the camps as if they were small towns, establishing schools and recreational activities and even holding elections for “self-government.” Inmates took on much of the work to keep the camps running, from preparing and serving food in the mess halls to felling trees for firewood, all for a paltry $12 to $19 a month. Inmates worked hard to beautify their own barren surroundings, planting gardens and making a wide variety of furniture and decorative items for their units. But at the same time, the reality of imprisonment was lost on few.
German and Italian Americans were also considered "enemy aliens."
They were surveilled by the FBI, which could arrest them and send them immediately to internment camps -- sometimes the same ones.
They interned enough German Americans -- 11,000 officially, plus any family members who volunteered to come with them -- to warrant building four camps for them.
Some countries in South America expelled Germans, sending them to the United States specifically to be placed in internment camps.
The website below says that, "ironically," 81 were Jewish Germans who had fled Germany.
And that some of those were later sent back to the Nazis in exchange for American citizens detained in Germany.
I don't think that's ironic, I think it's fucking garbage. And fuck this website for glossing over it without even a link to more info.
Only 418 Italian Americans were sent to these camps, so they didn't have their own; they were put in the German and Japanese ones.
But 600,000 Italian Americans were surveilled, placed under curfews, and subjected to searches and seizures.
Whether you were Japanese, Italian, or German, you were only considered an "enemy alien" if you had been born in Japan, Italy, or Germany. Not if you had been born in the United States.
BUT they absolutely rounded up and interned people who had been born in the United States. They just didn't call them enemy aliens. That's all.
Regardless of your nationality, the FBI could and did mess with naturalized citizens.
"Enemy aliens" who were not (currently) in internment camps were required to "register with the Department of Justice and carry paperwork with them at all times verifying their registration."
If they wanted to travel anywhere besides work, places of worship, or medical facilities, they "were required to fill out documents that listed their destination, mode of transportation, and return dates. This paperwork was filed with local US Attorney offices and forwarded to the FBI for their records.
"Attorney General Biddle also issued curfews for those enemy aliens living in certain communities along the West Coast, including major cities in California with large Italian American populations like San Francisco. Confiscation of property rounded out a series of violations that Italian immigrants faced in the early days of the war."
Early in the war, the government openly considered mass removal of German and Italian immigrants, along with Japanese ones. They decided it would be logistically impossible.
But in 1942, the government:
required nearly 10,000 Italian immigrants to move out of restricted areas of California along the coast (predominantly San Diego and San Francisco) to areas further inland. Sometimes, these distances were absurdly short—relocating a few streets over to move outside of restricted areas. In other cases, some went to the nearest large city closest to their homes outside of the restricted zones, like Reno, Nevada.
Regardless of the location, finding housing was often difficult, particularly when employment was interrupted. The Alien Property Division of the Department of Justice confiscated thousands of boats used by Italian fishermen along the coast, jeopardizing economic security and creating financial difficulties for their families.
Although the American internment camps are sometimes called concentration camps, and even President Roosevelt called them that, they fortunately bore little resemblance to the Nazi concentration camps.
The Nazis took a terrible preexisting idea, and turned it into a living hell - as the letter from this survivor shows.
My cousin's aunt (idk her exact relationship to me, maybe first cousin once removed?) had an FBI file because as a (child or teenager, the story is unclear) when agents came to the camp at which she was interned, she stomped around them and sang loud songs so they couldn't carry on conversations with people. Like, literally, a minor, already contained in a camp, and the agents were threatened enough by her singing songs that they started a file on her. That's really stuck with me.
She was a fucking badass, by all accounts, and spent chunks of her adult life demanding an apology and reparations from the US Gov't for what they put her family through. I wish my cousins had been able to know her better.