Clash of Cultures & the Discovery of Gold      123456

Forced Migration – Japanese Internment Camps

Other wartime internal migrations were motivated by racism and fear rather than opportunity. In 1942, the U.S. government began forcing American residents of Japanese descent to abandon their homes and businesses for transport to isolated, military-controlled internment camps. Approximately 120,000 California men, women, and children of all ages left most of their belongings behind to spend the next several years in poorly constructed camps located in the nation’s hinterland east of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Shared and different experiences for migrants and immigrants

In general, life for the internal migrant is different from that of the immigrant. Unlike many foreign immigrants, most migrants already are citizens of the place to which they are moving. Moreover, they speak the same language and might share some of the customs. These factors can make the difficult process of moving and then settling into a new home easier for people who move within the same country.

Internal migrants, however, also experience many of the same problems faced by those arriving from outside the United States. They can encounter discrimination because they look and sound different from established residents, as blacks did when they moved to places such as Los Angeles and Oakland in the 1940s. They might be accused of stealing jobs or state welfare monies, as the Dust Bowl refugees were when they arrived in the 1930s. And they might be subject to newly passed laws restricting the ability to live and work where they want to, as happened to Filipinos after the Philippine Independence Act of 1934 or to Japanese Americans during wartime internment.