Japanese-Americans Essay

Ethnic Institutions
“The Japanese,” according to a standard sociological source of the 1920s, “are the most efficiently and completely organized among the immigrant groups.”   Some of these organizations can be classified as social, religious, economic, or political, but most were multifunctional.   The most known of the organizations for Japanese Americans is the Japanese American Citizens League, formed in 1929 and is the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization.   The Japanese American Citizens League was founded on the focus of protecting the civil right of Americans with Japanese ancestry, but today are committed to protecting all segments of the Asian Pacific American community.   The Japanese American Citizens League contains an anti-hate program whose goal is to empower its members and the public to respond to incidents of defamation and hate crimes and to a greater understanding about the values of tolerance and diversity.

Historical Racism and Discrimination
The main event in Japanese discrimination is the 1941-1945 internment of over 110,000 people in concentration camps run by the U.S. during WWII. Many more were deported, left the country, or were pressed into military service, but anyone with at little as one-eighth Japanese blood was rounded up and sent to one of ten camps in California, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. It was the most rapid and efficient evacuation operation in U.S. history. Many Japanese Americans cooperated, voluntarily assembling at designated points, and marched off to trains or buses sent to haul them away. During the internment, most people lost their residences, businesses, and anything else they owned. Later, in 1983, the U.S. government agreed to pay $20,000 to each of 60,000 survivors, but mostly because the Supreme Court ruled the internment illegal and unconstitutional.   This was not the only discrimination faced by the Japanese Americans.   When they first started immigrating...