One of the many atrocities during World War II, Japanese internment in the United States has been heavily studied and analyzed, leaving most people to agree in classifying the internment as cruel and unnecessary. However, when reading chapter 5 of Mae M. Ngai’s Impossible Subjects, a quote from Earl Warrn, previous attorney general of California, shows how the Japanese were heavily targeted within the United States at the time, more than American communities from any other nation. Warren’s quote explained how Americans were more familiar with Germans and Italians than they were with the Japanese causing Americans to react in the form of internment. So in a clearer sense, internment, just like many other kinds of humanitarian crises, was caused by the ignorance of those in power and their lack of interest in educating themselves. Feeding into the idea of the “model immigrant,” because Germans and Italians were considered more white than the Japanese and had closer ties to the ancestry of the white community in America, Americans thought they understood Germans and Italians but not the Japanese. They could not predict how the Japanese community within the U.S. would react to the United States being at war with Japan, and so that fear drove them to place people of Japanese descent, even those who were American citizens, in camps, going as far as to strip them of the right to join the military or rejoin society until much later.
Comparing this to the anti-semitism in Germany during the same period, the Nazi regime similarly fed on the fear of the nation and the ignorance of the people concerning the Jewish religion. These humanitiarian crises during World War II targeted a certain community based on their identities and proves the power of misinformation. Though drastically different in countless ways, both the treatment of the Japanese in the United States and the treatment of the Jews under the Nazi regime sprouted from a place of fear and unfamiliarity and created horrific outcomes.
Comparing this to the anti-semitism in Germany during the same period, the Nazi regime similarly fed on the fear of the nation and the ignorance of the people concerning the Jewish religion. These humanitiarian crises during World War II targeted a certain community based on their identities and proves the power of misinformation. Though drastically different in countless ways, both the treatment of the Japanese in the United States and the treatment of the Jews under the Nazi regime sprouted from a place of fear and unfamiliarity and created horrific outcomes.