A Challenge to Democracy

The Japanese were sent to relocation centers which housed around 18,000 people. The entire community was surrounded by wire fencing and guards. The films talks about what they went through and the struggle they had to overcome. The Japanese were placed in these camps because of World War II. The Japanese were relocated and this situation went against the constitution.
The Japanese were forced to work to grow crops. They had to level the land and built irrigation systems to start off the farming. The wages they received were low and they got very little money to spend on clothes and toys for their children. The children still went to school and the older children learned how to farm in school. Japanese workers had their own professions on the west coast before they were sent to the camps such as being in the medical profession. The crime rate has always been low and this had stayed the same in the relocation centers. In order to have fun in the centers they would start their own football teams, and other sport teams, but the government refused to spend much money on their recreation. The USO club was established for the Japanese-American soldiers and other clubs were form such as boy scouts. The film stated that “Relocation centers are not normal and will never be.” It also said that the relocations centers were not even needed. After leaving the relocation centers the Japanese would get jobs such as nurses and making parts for bombs. Others went on to college and some still continued to farm.
The relocation centers were only built to make sure the Japanese already in the U.S. were not trying do any harm to the U.S. Everyone was paranoid after the Pearl Harbor attacks but was it really worth it to put all the Japanese people in relocation centers? It seems as if there could have been other solutions to this problem. The relocation centers just did not seem ethical. How can people just lock up a race because of who a country is feuding with? The U.S. should have never done this. If they had pure evidence of Japanese Americans committing terrorists acts then that is who they should go after, not the entire Japanese population.
I thought what the U.S. did was wrong. I remember learning about these camps in past history classes and this video refreshed my memory about it. I think the U.S. has made some major mistakes in the past, but we cannot change things today because we have other issues to worry about such as the war in Iraq.