Why Were American Jews and Blacks Silent When Japanese Americans Were Sent to Camps?

In the coming semester, my students and I will explore this question in a new undergraduate course that I am launching.

We will read Cheryl Greenberg, “Black and Jewish Responses to Japanese Internment,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Winter, 1995), pp. 3-37. Maybe you can google it.

For now, here is how Prof. Greenberg answered this question:

“Two months after Pearl Harbor, emotions in the United States ran high. Beyond the sense of betrayal, Americans believed the Japanese were winning the war. It was at that most bleak of times that the Commander in Chief, one of the most popular presidents in history, issued Executive Order 9066. 

Blacks and Jews, struggling to protect their own people, to support the war effort as the best hope against fascism and racism, and to gain a more secure foothold for themselves in unstable times, allowed their usual sensitivity to discrimination to lapse at a crucial time for civil rights in this country. This lapse was ironic, given Jews' criticism of Germans claiming obliviousness to the plight of Jews there, and African Americans' criticism of those who placed other priorities before the struggle for racial equality. Nevertheless, it was a lapse shared by virtually every organization in America, and serves as a chilling reminder that eternal vigilance is not only the price of freedom but its only secure guarantor.”