Far From Perfect Union: The civil injustice of Japanese Americans during WWII
...felt I’m an equal American, that I felt kind of threatened and nervous.”(Akiko K Interview. Densho Project, Copyright 1997) There is a true justification for Akiko’s nervousness, and the threat that she may have felt is found warranted. This threat is the fact that Americans of Japanese decent were about to be imprisoned into interment camps as a measure of national security. Does the protection of American citizens require the imprisonment of other American citizens based on their ethnic origin? During World War II the answer of most Americans may obviously be viewed as, “Yes”. There is a problem in American mentality since so few Americans decided to speak out to defend our basic principles of “liberty and justice for all”. One journalist, Westbrook Pegler, describes the situation of Japanese in California by stating, “they should all be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now and to hell with habeas corpus.” This form of thinking is the problem that allowed such a civil injustice to occur in American History. As people of a freethinking society, we are obligated to revise our negative patterns in order to create a more perfect union of states. The perfect in unattainable, yet a better system is always achievable. (www.densho.org/causes/default.asp 5/2/05) All humans have a responsibility to follow several steps so that the global community can reside in harmony. In order to sustain a society that permits diversity and negates prejudice, we must ban together. Learning from mistakes is also a key component of implementing a union that improves from its predecessor. The final step is to subscribe to the process of ‘changing for the better’ without waver. Absolute commitment by all people to improving the society that we inhabit will create a more close to perfect union of states; it will even create a more perfect acceptance of humans around the world. If an American looks back to the mistreatment Japanese Americans experienced, one cannot help but feel bad. This bad feeling is not enough to make up for the days of lives that are impossible to replace for the victims of civil...