Japanese-American Civil Rights

1984 Words8 Pages
Kelcey Campbell Essay #1 African-American and Japanese-American Lives in a Time of War Many classified WWII as, “The Good War” but this didn’t come without hardship on the homelands throughout the war. It was a time to test many moral issues from a country branded upon freedom and equality, which had not been the case for many races and cultures. The war was a demonstration of civil rights’ gains and losses as seen with the advancement in the African-American community through war time labor needs, while Japanese-Americans civil rights had been compromised through unjust paranoia withdrawing much of the trust and loyalties to the United States. Discrimination was a very real and ugly issue in years leading up to the war as well as early…show more content…
But the need for this labor was too great to have a white only labor force. African-Americans became an important part in meeting production needs which became their key bargaining chip while dealing with African-American civil rights issues. There were many important events that lead to national recognition of racial tensions such as the brutal killing of Cleo Wright that became an FBI investigation and the first prosecution of whites for abandoning his human rights while strung by his neck behind a car through the black ghettos and set on fire in front of church services Sunday morning. 3 The Detroit race riots were caused through rising racial tensions and poor housing conditions that not only killed 35 and wounded many more, but it prevented war production costing millions of man hours. 4 These circumstances demonstrated the power the black communities had during the war knowing the nation could not afford to put production on hold. Many black civil rights organizations were formed including NAACP and the FEPC. These organizations took advantage of this need for black workers as well as protests against the government knowing FDR could not afford to sacrifice the image of equality and freedom throughout the nation and became an intricate part in advancements for African-American civil rights. These threatening protests were known as, “the March on Washington”. These movements became very successful in implementing more civil rights for…show more content…
soil in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This attack assured the entrance of the United States into WWII. We would join allies to fight the Axis enemy which was made up of Japan, Nazi Germany, and Italy. This personal attack on the U.S. by Japan set the tides for what was to come ahead within the war. This quickly became a battle of superiority while Japan thought they were the superior race as everyone else was scum. John Dower notes in his essay, “Race Language, And War In Two Cultures” that the fight against Japan was a different battle than our fight against Italy and the Nazis. This quickly became a war with racial overtones. The U.S. saw Japan as cockroaches or rodents while they claimed the U.S. and Britain were a bunch of dumb ogres. There were many racial names that made several news headlines such as yellow belly, yellow rats, tree monkeys, and several others.
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