During World War II Japanese-Americans were interned in 10 "relocation" camps. About 120,000 were interned, and about 2/3s were American citizens, supposedly under the protection of the Constitution. Some people called them detention centers or concentration camps. President Roosevelt signed an executive order for them to be rounded up and taken away from their homes and forced to live in "tarpaper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind," according to the 1943 report by the War Relocation Authority (Japanese American Internment web site and Japanese Internment in World War II web site). .

             The internment of American citizens violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution which says, "No person shall be.deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The people were simply rounded up and taken into captivity. There was no legal process involved where each person could defend him or herself in a court of law. Granted, there were no prison bars, but they were kept there and prevented from going home, so it amounts to the same thing. Many of the people lost all their property, their businesses, inventories, homes-everything--because of the relocation, again with no legal recourse.

             I do not believe it is ever okay to suspend a constitutional provision. The founding fathers knew there would be times of crisis (war, for instance, and crime waves) when the government would want to suspend the rights of citizens-that is why they wrote the Fifth Amendment, so the government would never have power to deprive people of their rights. Recently, Bush okayed the use of torture to get information from people suspected of being terrorists. This is in violation of the Constitution which prohibits all torture. If we allow the government to do such things, we could be next in line to lose our rights. The government was not justified in what they did to Japanese-Americans.