As I read through all of They Called Us Enemy, an essential question kept popping in my head. Why the Japanese? In WWII, there were many more enemies than just the Japanese, such as the Germans and Italians, but they weren’t persecuted for their ethnicity. The Germans and Italians, at least in the United States, got off fairly easy for their role in the war, so I began to wonder, why the Japanese? The United States were in as much war with the Germans and Italians as they were with the Japanese, so how come they were singled out in the plethora of “enemy” citizens? From the resources I read, I believe that the Japanese were singled out because of the United States need for a scapegoat, and the ethnic differences that differed between them and the Americans. 

First of all, I believe that the Japanese were placed in an internment camp because the United States needed someone to blame. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the public was in a rage. Japan, a country known for their fierce military operations, has just attacked the United States, killing thousands of innocent soldiers. The United States had to take action to prevent an uprising, so first, they rightly declared war on the aggressors, but also wrongly imprisoned over 100,000 Japanese Americans for simply being Japanese. The American government feared that Japanese Americans could give the enemies information about the United States military operations, and the government believed that they couldn’t risk that happening. The United States government began to make laws and order excluding Japanese from certain activities, giving them curfews, and eventually excluding them from society. On page 23 in They Called Us Enemy, it paints the picture of the United States government beginning to make proclamations excluding the Japanese from participation in daily society, which slowly gets bigger and bigger until they are ultimately put in concentration camps. They Called Us Enemy paints an important picture about how the Japanese began to get singled out, and how they started to become public enemy number 1.

In addition to that, the Japanese were especially persecuted because of their ethnic differences. Many people throughout history said that the Japanese were persecuted against because of their noticeable differences from the average American. With many Germans and Italians, they look very similar to most of the American population, a good amount of the American population is part German or Italian. However, when the Japanese attacked, civilians and military commanders could easily tell the difference between the Japanese and average civilians, so they attacked the Japanese and imprisoned them quickly. According to the History channel, John L. Dewitt, military commander, said that in order to prevent another Pearl Harbor-like event from happening, there needed to be significant control against the Japanese people in America, and to weed out the spies and enemies. He said this as many of the anti-Japanese orders were being passed, and was certainly a cause for the Japanese internment. 

In conclusion, the Japanese were heavily persecuted in WWII due to their ethnic differences from the majority of the American population. As Pearl Harbor took place, the Japanese could be easily singled out from the rest of the American population, leading to civil unrest, and the government taking action against the Japanese. From They Called Us Enemy, and the History Channel, we can see first hand experiences from the people who were affected by the order and the ones issuing them, and that gives us a first hand experience of why the Japanese were interned. But in the end, some might still ask, Why the Japanese?