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Japanese Americans and Civil Religion

            Japanese internment in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, caused a new sense of ethnic and national identity within the Japanese American community. In Jane Naomi Iwamura's article, "Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion,"" the author argues that: "what has emerged from the collective experience of war and internment is a faith that is tied to no particular religious tradition, but that takes racial-ethnicity identity as its starting point. Japanese Americans have developed no less than their own brand of civil religion"" (939). In other words, the author states that the experience of internment and war for the Japanese people left the community with a sense of ethnic identity to which that community is able to create a new civil religion around. The Japanese American experience during World War II was the catalyst to a new form of civil religion within the United States of America. .
             Jane Iwamura's primarily uses congressional legislations such as the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and Executive Order 9066. The most important piece of legislation for her argument is Executive Order 9066 because without that order there would have never been Japanese American internment in the west coast. Without Japanese American internment Jane Iwamura would have never been able to write this article and, more importantly, there would have never been the passing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Also, the creation of a new civil religion formed by internment on the west coast for Japanese Americans would have never happened.
             Jane Naomi Iwamura does a good job of showing the contrasting views of American religion and Japanese religion. In describing the dissimilarities in religious outlooks, Jane Iwamura states: "the difference between the American view of religion and the Japanese view is that the Japanese did not compartmentalize religion. Religion was a part of and inseparable from life.


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