Fear, racism, and distress. This is what the Japanese Americans had to face during the internment in World War II. As a citizen of the United States of America, every Japanese American should have been granted equal rights regardless of ancestry. Instead, these citizens were treated as foreign prisoners of war, stripped of all their rights and their belongings. No cause or proof of wrongdoing existed, and many of these internees even fought for the United States against Japan. The United States government failed in its constitutional responsibility to protect the right to "life, liberty, and property" of all its citizens.
...democracy can be an illusion and constitutional rights a meaningless phrase...There are some...who say that we were there for our protection. If so, why were the guns pointed toward us rather than away form us?"
~Mary Sakaguchi Oda