Coach Souders' Website



Japanese Internment: a Critical PerspectiveA. The excerpt and photos below come from a Life Magazine article from December 22, 1941, a few weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. The article title is "How To Tell Japs From the Chinese"3519170106726000"In the first discharge of emotions touched off by the Japanese assaults on their nation, US citizens have been demonstrating a distressing ignorance on the delicate question of how to tell a Chinese from a Jap. Innocent victims in cities all over the country are many of the 75,000 US Chinese, whose homeland is our staunch ally. So serious were the consequences threatened, that the Chinese consulates last week prepared to tag their nationals with identification buttons. To dispel some of this confusion, LIFE here adduces a rule-of-thumb from the anthropometric conformations that distinguish friendly Chinese from enemy alien Japs."left10225700right33527200left27808000 B. The propaganda poster below is from 1942. C. The political cartoon below is by Dr. Seuss. D. The excerpt below was written by Supreme Court Justice Murphy, who disagreed with the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1944 Korematsu v. United States case. “This exclusion of `all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien,' from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military necessity in the absence of martial law ought not to be approved. Such exclusion goes over `the very brink of constitutional power' and falls into the ugly abyss of racism. …. Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support..... Being an obvious racial discrimination, the order deprives all those within its scope of the equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. It further deprives these individuals of their constitutional rights to live and work where they will, to establish a home where they choose and to move about freely. In excommunicating them without benefit of hearings, this order also deprives them of all their constitutional rights to procedural due process. Yet no reasonable relation to an `immediate, imminent, and impending' public danger is evident to support this racial restriction which is one of the most sweeping and complete deprivations of constitutional rights in the history of this nation in the absence of martial law...”E. left40957500The political cartoon below is by Herblock. It was published in 1943 and refers to the internment of Japanese-Americans. F. Bugs Bunny YouTube search: WWII Anti-Japanese Propaganda (1:19) Commando Duck YouTube search: Commando Duck: Donald Duck against the Japanese (6:55)F. “That Damned Fence," an anonymous poem written by a person of Japanese descent, circulated at the Poston internment camp in Arizona.They've sunk the posts deep into the groundThey've strung out wires all the way around.With machine gun nests just over there,And sentries and soldiers everywhere.We're trapped like rats in a wired cage,To fret and fume with impotent rage;Yonder whispers the lure of the night,But that DAMNED FENCE assails our sight.We seek the softness of the midnight air,But that DAMNED FENCE in the floodlight glareAwakens unrest in our nocturnal quest,And mockingly laughs with vicious jest.With nowhere to go and nothing to do,We feel terrible, lonesome, and blue:That DAMNED FENCE is driving us crazy,Destroying our youth and making us lazy.Imprisoned in here for a long, long time,We know we're punished—though we've committed no crime,Our thoughts are gloomy and enthusiasm damp,To be locked up in a concentration camp.Loyalty we know, and patriotism we feel,To sacrifice our utmost was our ideal,To fight for our country, and die, perhaps;But we're here because we happen to be Japs.We all love life, and our country best,Our misfortune to be here in the West,To keep us penned behind that DAMNED FENCE,Is someone's notion of NATIONAL DEFENSE!In the poem above:What is the author’s tone? Identify at least 3 examples of diction that help support your claim. Discuss at least 3 examples of figurative language. What is the effect of the figurative language? Analyze the title. Why might the author have chosen to title the poem thusly? Identify any other poetic and/or literary devices to help in your analysis. Essential QuestionsWhy didn’t fellow Americans object to the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942?What was the social, economic and personal impact of the internment - for those sent to camps and those left behind?Was the government justified in sending Japanese Americans to relocation camps purely on the basis of ethnicity? Why or why not?How should a country at war balance its citizens’ civil liberties with the need for national security?Could a government-mandated act such as the internment happen today? Why or why not?Should this be considered a tragedy? Explain why/why not. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download