Internment
One of the militaryıs largest undertakings during WWII was the mass evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast of the United States. This stretched from Washington to Oregon and down to southern California. The decision to evacuate the Japanese was one made at the highest levelby the President of the United States, who was acting as Commander in Chief.[3 pp.6] What military plans and recommend-ations lay behind this decision? What alternatives was the President presented? To what extent was his decision based on military considerations? Initial plans for evacuation of suspected people from strategic areas along the West Coast concerned enemy aliens of all three Axis nations: Germany, Italy, and Japan rather than people of Japanese ancestry alone. The census in 1940 showed that out of a total of 126,947in the United States, 112,353 Japanese were living in the three Pacific states. California had 93,717 Japanese, or nearly three fourths of the national total. Out of the west coast Japanese, 40,869 were aliens (called Issei) ineligible for citizenship through naturalization proceedings, and 71,484 were American-born (called Nisei) and therefore U.S. citizens. For several decades the Japanese p
In other exchanges on this and succeeding days Gen. DeWitt explained that what the California authorities proposed to do was to move both citizen and alien Japanese from urban areas and from along the seacoast to agricultural areas within the state. They wanted to this in particular in order to avoid having to replace the Japanese with Mexican and Negro laborers who might otherwise have to be brought into California in considerable numbers. The California officials felt they needed about ten days to study the problem and come up with a workable plan. By February it appeared they could produce a plan that would be satisfactory from the standpoint defense. In any event, all planning for mass evacuation of either aliens or citizens from strategic areas was deferred pending new arrangements that were in the making with the Department of Justice for more effective control of enemy aliens. While these arrang-
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3721
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)
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