Years Of Infamy Essay

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In the wake of the wartime panic that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, 110,000 Japanese Americans residing along the east coast of America were driven from home and banished to desert wasteland. The book, Years of Infamy: The untold story of America’s concentration camps written by Michi Nishiura Weglyn in 1976 recounts this tragic period in history from the initial internment of the Japanese Americans in American concentration camps to their liberation years to come after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a day which will forever live in infamy. Years of Infamy is highly acclaimed by critics and reviews as being, “ Powerful, passionate, well-documented, authentic in tone” by foreign affairs and, “ A conscience-wrenching …show more content…

A month prior to Pearl Harbor, a State Department report by Curtis B. Munson found overwhelming loyalty and patriotism among America's Japanese minority; Likewise, most showed , “a pathetic eagerness to be Americans.” . However, as the U.S. approached the still unknown day of Pearl Harbor, relationships between Japanese Americans and the American government began to deteriorate because of multiple signs and intercepted code which showed the possibility of war in the near future with Japan . When news strikes of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, shortly after, president Franklin D. Roosevlet along with congress declare war on Japan and issue an order to imprison all Japanese Americans of suspicion on the west coast. Roosevelt authorized the mass deportation and incarceration with the Executive order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate military areas from which any or all people could be excluded. And although the order was initially in question of whether it was constitutional was proven constitutional by the court case of Korematsu versus the United States two years later in 1944. Weglyn then singles out that Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox was the moving force behind Japanese internment and Col. Karl R. Bendetsen as the man who

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