World War II Internment Camps: Violations of Human Rights in the USA and Canada

The great depression took its toll on men and women alike and it was only until the 1940's and World War II that the depression ended and a boom for War materials were needed. Since the men had gone to war women had to fill the factory jobs and keep the production line rolling. White women and black women were able to find jobs during this war-economy manufacturing boom.

It is to be noted that the boom was within the munitions factories supplying the war effort. Outside of the production lines people were living on rations, and were careful about the clothing they wore etc. No one could afford to be extravagant.

Working Situation

The American government reclassified 55% of the jobs meaning that women could work in the factories. It started with single women filling the positions in 1943, and then married women were able to fill them later on as well.

Not all women were free in America

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, put pressure and suspicion on Japanese Americans. Japanese men as well as women lost their possessions and their freedom and were sent to the infamous interment camps. These camps were known as War Relocation Camps. Executive Order 9066 issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt prevented all people of Japanese decent from living in on the Pacific Coast unless they were in interment camps. He had created what was called exclusion zones. This order was not applied equally throughout America. The pacific west coast was hit the hardest.

By the 20th century 90 percent of Japanese immigrants had migrated to California and there was already an anti-Japanese feeling long before World War II. By 1905 California had enacted the anti-miscegenation law. A law forbidding marriage between Mongolians (people from the East) and Caucasians.

In 1906 the California Board of Education expelled 93 Japanese students; 25 were actual Japanese American citizens from their schools and sent them to a segregated school in their Chinatown district.

To be continued

Japanese Canadians were interned during that second world war days, also German and Italian Canadian political activists. Adrien Arcand was a Montreal Journalist and fascist who campaigned from 1929 until his death in 1967 who was also interned. He appointed himself the Canadian führer.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

http://topaztragedy.googlepages.com/home2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien_Arcand