America at War: The Internment of Japanese Americans

Denial of Civil Rights.

The imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II was one of the gravest violations of constitutional liberties in the history of the United States. Although their internment was a direct result of animosities raised by the attack on Pearl Harbor, the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans is also symptomatic of the anti-Asian sentiment present in the western United States since the arrival of Chinese as laborers on the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s. When overcrowding in Japan also sent waves of immigrants eastward in search of opportunity, West Coast states and cities passed laws discriminating against foreign-born Japanese and established segregated schools. In 1924 the U.S. government passed the Alien Restriction Act, which prevented recent Asian—but not European—immigrants from owning property and obtaining citizenship. Clannish and facing discrimination from...

[The entire page is 1286 words long]

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