The forced eviction of Japanese Americans is not much different from other acts of separation and discrimination carried out over the years globally. In the labor camps where the Japanese Americans were held, all adults were required to work 40 hours a week. Similarly, Jews in the Third Reich in Germany were forced to work. In the early national development era, American leaders debated whether American Indians should be treated as individuals or as a nation. However, with regard to the Japanese, the position was very definite – their rights should be limited regardless of the presence or absence of individual guilt.
The emergence of a specific apartheid regime effectively legalized new age slavery while nominally granting rights to blacks. The Japanese Americans were also treated as slaves – held in horrific conditions, forced to work, and stripped of their property rights (Healey and Stepnick 361). The laws passed against the Japanese echoed the content of Jim Crow laws. They justified the forced relocation of people of Japanese national origin because of a perceived danger they posed. The way Gypsies and gays were kept in the Third Reich is fully consistent with how the Japanese Americans were kept during their forced deportation to the United States. The first chain of shelters for Japanese deportees was the 12 prefabricated distribution camps, guarded and fenced behind barbed wire (Healey and Stepnick 361). Exactly the same type of wire surrounded every concentration camp in the Third Reich.
In general, there are no significant differences between the forcible deportation of Japanese and other similar acts of separation. The pretexts for the policy of oppressing people may vary, but their essence is the same. The American government’s acknowledgment of the cruelty and inhumanity of the Japanese can only partially make the grief of the Japanese people easier to bear. This event will forever be remembered as a shameful chapter in American history.
Work Cited
Healey, Joseph F., and Andy Stepnick. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. Sage Publications, 2019.