LA Times Drops Use of Word ‘Internment’ to Describe Mass Incarceration of Japanese Americans
thewrap.comarticle by Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe described the distinction between internment and incarceration and the historical context the terms have in connection to the result of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. “Instead, The Times will generally use ‘incarceration,’ ‘imprisonment,’ ‘detention’ or their derivatives to describe this government action that shattered so many innocent lives,” wrote Watanabe, whose parents and grandfather were detained in the days after Pearl Harbor.“My parents, Shigeo and Joanne Watanabe, were U.S.
citizens born and raised in Seattle — she a student at Seattle University who loved parties and red painted fingernails, he an aspiring accountant with a golden glove and killer smile,” wrote Teresa Watanbe.
Watanbe continued: “In the aftermath of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, they were imprisoned in an incarceration camp — not an internment camp.”Just two months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt issued an executive order entitled Executive Order 9066, claiming it was an effort to curb potential Japanese espionage.
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