Works Cited

Primary Sources

“Loyalty Questions #24-28” The Loyalty Questionnaire. Feb 1943

“They Have Everything Except Their Liberty.” Life Magazine. 20 Mar 1944

Eleanor Roosevelt. “A Challenge to American Sportsmanship.” Collier’s. 16 Oct 1943

“L.A. Housing Fight Looms as Japs Return” Chicago Defender. 13 Jan 1946

“Big Problems Confront Nisei in Relocation” The Colorado Times. 16 Jun 1945

 Secondary Sources

 Ngai, M. Impossible Subjects Chpt. 5. 

Lyon, Cherstin. "Loyalty questionnaire." Densho Encyclopedia. 19 Mar 2013

Conclusion

Throughout World War II, Japan was one of the biggest threats to the United States and our homeland. The attack on Pearl Harbor is to this day one of the worst attacks on American soil, and will never be forgotten. This attack led to the United States questioning Japanese-American intentions, and ultimately led to the internment of over 120,000 Japanese-American citizens. The Loyalty Questionnaire was a way to show the government that you were loyal to the United States if you were of Japanese heritage, but the fact that they were being locked away and stripped of their liberty angered many of these people. Tension between Americans and Japanese-Americans grew during this stage of the war, and only escalated even after the war was over when the Japanese were allowed to return back to their homes. The sources used raise the question as to how representative of the American population were they, that is did more Americans support or not support the internment of these people? The significance of these findings are that this racial tension was felt at the end of the war, and led to many other issues of race in the near future. It would be interesting to take this research a step further and see how the Japanese-American racial tension played a role in other races racial discrimination, such as African-Americans. The next few decades would be vital for both cultures, and it would be interesting to see exactly how this happened.

Case Study 3: Tension after Internment

Eventually, those internees that were considered “loyal” were let back into society. They were once again recognized as American citizens and given back their right to liberty. There was one problem though: they had just been locked up in prisons for the last two years! How can you expect innocent people that were just locked up in their own country to just act like nothing happened? At the same time, many Americans were wary of these people being released because they had all been considered disloyal in the past. This distrust from the white Americans coupled with the past few years of anger and tension was enough to cause major issues while Japanese-Americans were attempting to settle back into society, and it showed through housing discrimination. In an article from The Chicago Defender in 1945 entitled “L.A. Housing Fight Looms as Japs Return”, there is a lot of talk about the crowded living space in Los Angeles and that once the Japanese returned it turned into a race battle. Current tenants of the quarters faced many court battles for their property that was formerly owned by Japanese-Americans, and now that they were returning they wanted their property back. The army even got involved by “permitting evacuated Japanese-Americans to return to their property on the West Coast”, forcing many people to vacate their property. As you can imagine, this created major turmoil between the current tenants of the property and Japanese-Americans. In another article in The Colorado Times, it describes a “Need to Pioneer” by these Japanese-Americans being released from camps. Those that are returning come with the knowledge that there will be pioneering to do, maybe even more than their first generation parents went through. (Colorado Times 1945) This was a ridiculous comment in my opinion, how can people that already had lives in America previous to the war have the need to “pioneer” all over again? They got placed in these camps, they should be placed right back where they were after they got released. This outrage is shown in the same article, how there are many returnees threatening to take the law into their own hands to get their homes back. (Colorado Times 1945) 

Figure 3: Japanese family after release from internment

Figure 3: Japanese family after release from internment