Essays on American Internment

American Pastime opens with a Japanese family living in Los Angeles. This is the Nomura family and it is evicted from its home and business after Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066. The family is rounded up into Topaz, an internment camp in Utah’s arid area. Here, they meet many other Japanese from different parts of the country. Nomura starts a baseball league in the camp. While in the camp, Lyle, Nomura’s son gets into a relationship with Billy Burrell’s daughter, Katie. Billy Burrell is one of the guards at Topaz. The climax of ...

Background

In 1931, The Empire of Japan attacked and took over Manchuria, a resources-rich Chinese region. Japan took over Manchuria because it wanted to take control of the natural resources found there especially oil (Inada 11). The U.S refused to recognize Japan’s jurisdiction over Manchuria arguing that the control was established through force. The U.S had close trade relations with China, and it wanted to protect its interests in the country. Japan attacked China severally so as to weaken it from claiming back Manchuria. In 1937, the U.S started considering how it could stop Japan’s quest to expand ...

In February 1942, three years after the commencement of the Second World War and a mere two months after Japan forces attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was President of the United States at the time, issued “Executive order 9066” (Foner 692). As per the directives of the document, the President authorized Henry Stimson, the United States Secretary of War at the time, to move West Coast individuals of Japanese descent to relocation camps. Accordingly, the military relocated an estimated eleven thousand Japanese Americans into internment camps in which they were to remain until 1946 (Foner 692). Throughout ...