How could we have avoided Japanese Americans being put in Internment Camps?

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rohak1212

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They could have all simply been shot. That would have avoided any need for camps. I know a lot of people these days like to complain about how the Japanese immigrants in North America were mistreated, but really, considering the times and the events that led to their interment, they were actually treated quite well. When you consider that the Japanese imprisoned immigrants, and used them as slave labour, the conditions in the camps in North America was quite good. Yes, I know they lost possessions, but they were not abused as a matter of course, they were not starved, they were not forced to work to death. And with the hysteria that was rampant in those weeks after the Pearl Harbour attack, I'm sure there were some that were calling for harsher measures.

Realistically, they only other way to avoid the internment, and not just execute or deport everyone, would have been constant surveillance of each and every one of them. And that just wouldn't have been viable due to the cost and manpower required.
 
I need to know Ways this could have been Avoided besides the obvious "don't order them there".
 
- There were certainly many unnaturalized Italian citizens living in the United States at the time of the war.Roughly 600,000 Italians were required to carry identity cards that labeled them "resident aliens". Many of them had applied for citizenship papers before the war. Some 10,000 were asked to move inland, but only a small group was actually detained. About 1500 Italians, were arrested, but only 250 spent the two years in internment camps. This model could have been followed for Japanese living in the US.
- The largest group of Japanese Americans lived in Hawaii. With only a few exceptions these people weren't imprisoned. They did print special banknotes with the word HAWAII stamped on them. If the Japanese did in fact capture Hawaii, they would not be able to use the currency to undermine the United States.
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Racist attitudes made treatment of Japanese living in America treated very differently than the Italians. Italians who were already nationalized were not subject to any organized constraints, although some Italian newspapers who seemed to support Mussolini were shut down. In contrast the interred Japanese were over 60% naturalized citizens who were more than 1/16 Japanese blood. Although it is possible that some of these people might have worked as spies, to imprison all of them including children pre-emptively was a suspension of our basic laws.
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Certainly the cultural connections between the British and Germans are much stronger than those between the British and her allies, the French and the Russians. Even the king's older brother, the Duke of Windsor was privately accussed that he held pro-Nazi sympathies, and was moved to the Bahamas for the duration of the war. The Queen Mother was known as Mary of Teck (Teck is about 20 miles outside of Stuttgart). Queen Mary's father had fought in the Austrian army.
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The "Alien and Sedition Acts" of 1798 were probably sufficient to inter the Japanese Nationals living in the United States at the time of war. There were about 40-50 thousand of them. It might not have been fair since many of them had spent years trying to negotiate the tortured set of laws that were designed to prevent Asians from becoming US citizens. However, the internment of naturalized citizens because of race cannot be justified by any means (see the source for one book that tries).
 
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