90100 HD A CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WWII

A Challenge to Democracy a twenty-minute short propaganda film produced in 1944 by the War Relocation Authority, in an attempt to justify one of the more shameful moments in 20th Century American history. Unlike previous films made during the war about the Internment (such as “Japanese Relocation” — see the PeriscopeFilm Youtube Channel), this film makes it clear that the Japanese Americans were forced from their circumstances, and that they were made to live in a rather barren relocation camp, which was surrounded by armed guards. The film states bluntly that the medicine available at the camp was the same as that of everybody else in war time—barely adequate.

More positive features of camp life are also shown, whatever their historical accuracy may be: it shows the internees organizing a self-government, schools, and places of worship, as well as contributing to the war effort through industry. It also shows that some families were allowed to leave the camp if they were considered to be loyal enough.

The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens.These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans, who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans. Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with “one drop of Japanese blood” could be placed in internment camps.

Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate “military areas” from which “any or all persons may be excluded”. This authority was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the West Coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in government camps.[15] Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans voluntarily relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942,[16] while some 5,500 community leaders arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack were already in custody. The majority of nearly 130,000 Japanese Americans on the U.S. mainland were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

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