An Analysis Of Loyalty Questionnaire To Japanese Americans In The United States During World War Ⅱ

With the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor War and the deepening of the conflict between the United States and Japan,the situation of Japanese Americans in the United States became difficult.The FBI and the U.S.Office of Naval Intelligence conducted multiple investigations and surveillance of Japanese Americans,and before any conclusion could be made,Japanese Americans were labeled as "spies" and "yellows" and were ostracized in their lives.At this time,the American public and the U.S.government no longer believed in the loyalty of Japanese Americans,so how to prove the loyalty of Japanese Americans became a major issue for Japanese Americans and the U.S.government.Since the Japanese lived and worked in important military areas,the U.S.government made a plan to evacuate the Japanese on a large scale in order to avoid the destruction of military areas by the Japanese and because the American public did not want the Japanese living around them.After evacuating the Japanese from the important military areas,Roosevelt established the Wartime Relocation Authority(WRA)and appointed Mayer as the director to supervise the evacuation of the Japanese.The WRA established ten relocation centers for evacuating Japanese to live in.Subsequently,in order to get more Japanese to join the military,the U.S.government conducted a loyalty survey of Japanese Americans in the relocation centers and divided them into two categories based on the survey results: loyal to the U.S.and loyal to Japan.Disloyal Nisei were sent to the Tule Lake Internment Center to be incarcerated.In this process the confidence of Japanese descendants in American democracy was dealt a heavy blow and caused irreparable psychological trauma to Japanese Americans.Even after the war,the U.S.government’s reparations to Japanese Americans who were unjustly treated during World War Ⅱ could not make Japanese Americans forget the racial discrimination they had suffered.After all these years,the Loyalty Investigation incident can still cause the U.S.to reflect on democracy and racism,and to re-examine that history.