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The discussion topic for this module focuses on the U.S. government’s decision to round up Japanese and
Japanese Americans living in the country and send them to internment camps in 1942. After Pearl Harbor,
white Americans – particularly those living in California – turned on communities of Japanese and JapaneseAmericans. As the war with Japan intensified, and the U.S. government ramped up a deeply racist propaganda
campaign against Japanese, the suspicion and discrimination against Japanese-Americans in the United
States also greatly increased. In 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered more than 100,000
people of Japanese descent to give up their civil rights and personal property – including their homes and
businesses – and to move to internment camps scattered throughout the west. The order was later upheld by
the Supreme Court. Historians estimate that Japanese-Americans lost more than $4 billion in personal property
and wealth because of their internment – although years later their descendants were given a settlement of
about $2 billion. In 1944, when the U.S. government offered to release interned Japanese-Americans if they
agreed to give up their U.S. citizenship and be deported to Japan (known as the Renunciation Act of 1944),
fewer than 10% accepted the offer.
What is the key lesson Americans should learn from the history of the internment of Japanese-Americans
during World War II? In your answer, be sure to make clear whether you think it is appropriate for the
government to suspend the civil rights of any group of Americans based on ethnicity and detain them for an
unspecified amount of time in a detention center
