Madhavi Rampersaud
For my final paper, I decided to go back through history to research one of the biggest events that took place in American history: the attack on Pearl Harbor. I don’t plan on focusing on the attack itself, but rather the effects the war had on Japanese American families in American society. I found a great article online on the New York Times website that portrayed the racism and discrimination several Japanese Americans endured during the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor tragedy. This group of people were judged unfairly due to their physical features. Many people of Asian descent were accused of being Japanese and sentenced to cruel treatment. The 1940’s period is known as the era of Japanese American internment. Innocent people were subjected to abandon their homes and move into concentration camps; American’s semi-holocaust. The government authorized such a cruel declaration since America and Japan were going head to head in a brutal world war. The government felt that it could not trust anyone who had a Japanese background for fear they might be spies. As a result, anyone accused of being Japanese were condemned to injustice under the American law.
I was hoping to use my New York Times article as my foundation for this final paper. I was planning on doing more research about the internment of Japanese Americans by reading through the variety of information Baruch’s library databases provide us with. There are some very interesting articles that discuss the social effects the war between America and Japan had in society. In addition, one of the ideas I had was to connect this topic with modern society today. After all, racism has not disappeared completely. People are constantly discriminated against as well as discriminate against others. You would think that the world would learn from its previous mistakes and try to make things better but instead we haven’t changed as much as we like to think. As much as we pride ourselves in living in a democratic society, the government isn’t perfect. It has is flaws and those flaws should be pointed out.
** http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/04/us/japanese-americans-face-new-fears.html?scp=2&sq=japanese%20american%20racism%20in%20united%20states&st=cse
For my final paper, I decided to go back through history to research one of the biggest events that took place in American history: the attack on Pearl Harbor. I don’t plan on focusing on the attack itself, but rather the effects the war had on Japanese American families in American society. I found a great article online on the New York Times website that portrayed the racism and discrimination several Japanese Americans endured during the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor tragedy. This group of people were judged unfairly due to their physical features. Many people of Asian descent were accused of being Japanese and sentenced to cruel treatment. The 1940’s period is known as the era of Japanese American internment. Innocent people were subjected to abandon their homes and move into concentration camps; American’s semi-holocaust. The government authorized such a cruel declaration since America and Japan were going head to head in a brutal world war. The government felt that it could not trust anyone who had a Japanese background for fear they might be spies. As a result, anyone accused of being Japanese were condemned to injustice under the American law.
I was hoping to use my New York Times article as my foundation for this final paper. I was planning on doing more research about the internment of Japanese Americans by reading through the variety of information Baruch’s library databases provide us with. There are some very interesting articles that discuss the social effects the war between America and Japan had in society. In addition, one of the ideas I had was to connect this topic with modern society today. After all, racism has not disappeared completely. People are constantly discriminated against as well as discriminate against others. You would think that the world would learn from its previous mistakes and try to make things better but instead we haven’t changed as much as we like to think. As much as we pride ourselves in living in a democratic society, the government isn’t perfect. It has is flaws and those flaws should be pointed out.
