Japanese Internment
vs.
The Holocaust
Just an FYI for those interested. This coming Monday, March 21st at
around 7:00pm (it follows a meal), at the American Legion Rose Harms Post
Nazi holocaust survivor Nathan Taffel (of Mequon) will give a talk of his tragic
experiences and survival of the Mielec labor camp. This labor camp became part of the Plaszow
concentration camp. Taffel, from a family of 12, lost his parents and
7 sisters at the hands of the Nazis during his four years in the camp.
"I escaped death quite a few times, because of my age, I think," Taffel
said. "The Gestapo was going to shoot me because I wouldn't stop riding
my bicycle. My brother begged them to let me go." His message to children and adults,
"Don't hate. It destroys people."
Admission for the program only is $8 each, $5 for students.
Call Ken Grigas (of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Military Historians) at (262)284-1090 or
email rsvp@mkemh.com as seating is limited.
Not just the Nazis had
Camps!
December 7th 1941
II. The Home Front
• A. Japanese Internment
•
1. Executive Order
9066 – February 20, 1942
•
- The order attempts to
protect the U.S. from acts
of sabotage by creating
military zones that allow
persons of Japanese
ancestry to be relocated.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066
Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas
February 19, 1942
WHEREAS, the successful prosecution of the war requires every
possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national
defense material, national defense premises and national defense utilities
as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended
by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August
21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C. Title 50, Sec. 104):
We know Concentration Camps
are morally wrong!
The Big Three: Franklin Roosevelt in the
middle with Stalin and Churchill
A. Japanese Internment continued…
• 2. 1st and 2nd generation
Japanese Americans.
• 3. Told to gather
belongings and report to
assembly centers.
• 4. From assembly centers
to the internment camps.
• 5. 110,000 - 120,000
individuals affected.
Location of Japanese Internment Camps
During the 1930s and 1940s, German Nazi leaders established 22 concentration camps
where Jews, along with gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, Slavs, and others judged
undesirable, were imprisoned. Many prisoners were worked to death, shot, gassed, or
given lethal injections. By the end of the war, more than 10 million people had died in
concentration camps.
People of Japanese
descent, relocated from
the Seattle area, unload
their belongings as they
arrive at an internment
camp in Puyallup,
Wash., in April, 1942.
As military police stand guard, people of Japanese descent wait at a
transport center in San Francisco April 6, 1942 for relocation to an
internment center
Japanese citizens wait in line for their assigned homes at an alien
reception center in Manzanar, Calif., on March 24, 1942.
The Santa Anita Park race track is converted into an
internment camp for evacuated Japanese Americans
This is a general view of the Gila River, Canal, Japanese
internment camp north of Phoenix, Ariz.
Work Makes You Free?????
Housing in
Japanese
Internment
Camp
Members of the Chick-A-Dee Japanese American women's
softball team, relocated from Los Angeles, practice at the
internment center in Mandazar, Ca.,
Children in a Japanese Internment Camp
Children of
Auschwitz
Korematsu v. USA - see hand out
• During World War II
A little over 100,000
Japanese-Americans
were placed in “war
relocation camps” by
the US government.
• The US Supreme
Court upheld this
action!
Who was right in 1944?
Who is right today?
How do we Apologize???
6. $20,000????
• In 1988, the US government admitted that
the relocation of Japanese Americans during
World War II was wrong!
• Congress voted to pay each of the internees
still alive $20,000 and Congress apologized
for the actions of the Government during
World War II.
Korematsu
Honored with
Medal of Freedom
1996
This week, as we commemorate the Day of
Remembrance, marking the years since the
Executive Order was issued during World War II
which resulted in the incarceration of more than
110,000 Japanese Americans, we should stop and
reflect on the journey of a true hero of the civil rights
movement, Fred Korematsu.
The way I've heard the story is that in June of 1942,
Fred Korematsu, a 22-year-old draftsman, was locked
up in the Oakland Jail simply because he was
Japanese!
It was a long journey from Fred Korematsu's
incarceration in a local jail, to concentration camps,
through the darkest days of wartime anti-Japanese
hysteria, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. His
brave challenge to the government's decision to intern
Japanese Americans was rejected then by the high
court; his conviction for refusing to obey was upheld.
It was a journey so painful, that for decades he
couldn't even share these events with his own
children. Yet forty years later, with that same sense of
justice and courage, he decided to reopen the case;
and, in 1983, won a successful reversal of his
conviction.
President Clinton
presents Fred
Korematsu with a
Presidential Medal
of Freedom.
Korematsu's legal
challenges to
civilian exclusion
orders during
World War II
helped spur the
redress movement
for JapaneseAmericans
Manzanar Japanese internment camp near
Independence, Calif. 1997