Japanese American internment

Japanese American internment happened during World War II when the United States government forced about 110,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and live in internment camps. Many of the people who were sent to internment camps had been born in the United States.

Japanese American Internment
Manzanar internment camp for Japanese Americans
Operation
Period	February 1942 – June 30, 1946
Location	United States
Cause	Attack on Pearl Harbor; Niihau Incident;racism; war hysteria
Most camps were in the Western United States.
Total	Over 110,000 Japanese Americans, including over 66,000 U.S. citizens, forced into internment camps
Deaths	1,862 from all causes in camps

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and declared war on the United States. Many Americans were furious, and some blamed all Japanese people for what had happened at Pearl Harbor. They spread rumors that some Japanese people knew about the attack ahead of time and had helped the Japanese military. The FBI and other parts of the United States government knew that these rumors were not true, but did not say anything.

Japanese Americans began to feel that other Americans were becoming upset with them. For example, John Hughes, a man who read the news and listened to the radio in Los Angeles, California, spoke about Japanese Americans. There were reports of businesses that had anti-Japanese signs. For example, a barber shop put up a sign saying "Free shaves for Japs" and "not responsible for accidents." A funeral home hung a sign saying "I'd rather do business with a Jap than an American."

Internment starts

“	[My family were] Americans. [We] were citizens of this country. We had nothing to do with the war. We simply happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. But without charges, without trial, without due process—the [most important part] of our justice system—we were summarily rounded up, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, where [most of us lived], and sent off to 10 barb wire internment camps—prison camps, really, with [guard] towers, machine guns pointed at us ... I was a five-year-old ... We lost everything. - George Takei	”

In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order said that people who lived in some parts of the country could be taken out of those areas for any reason. While the order did not use the exact words "Japanese Americans", people knew that those were the people who would be taken out of those areas. The areas included all of California and the western parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. (See the area marked "exclusion zone" on the map on this page.) This was where most Japanese Americans lived at that time.

To keep Japanese Americans from leaving these areas on their own, the government stopped many of them from taking money out of their bank accounts. This made it harder for them to move.

Japanese Americans were given only 48 hours to leave for internment camps in other states. They were only allowed to carry one bag with them, and could not bring radios or cameras.

Who was interned

In total, the United States forced over 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps.

About 80% of the Japanese-American people who lived in the continental United States were forced to leave their homes and live in internment camps. More than three out of every five of these people were born in the United States, and were United States citizens. About half of the people sent to the camps were children.

Most of the Japanese Americans who were interned lived in the continental United States. About 160,000 Japanese Americans lived in Hawaii, but only a little over 1,000 of them were interned. Because there were so many Japanese American people living in such a small territory, interning them would have been almost impossible.

Inside the camps

Map showing where the Japanese American internment camps were.

There were three government agencies that ran camps. Ninety percent of the Japanese Americans were in camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Only Japanese Americans lived in the WRA camps.

Ten percent of the Japanese Americans were in mixed-race camps. These were either run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) or the United States Army. Many different people were interned in INS and Army camps. These people were included:

• German and Italian immigrants
• German Americans and Italian Americans
• Some refugees
• Commercial seamen from Germany and Italy whose ships were taken by the United States Navy, and passengers on those ships

WRA camps were surrounded by barbed wire. They were also guarded by soldiers who waited in watchtowers holding guns. Some people were shot. For example, James Wakasa, who stepped outside the barbed wire fence, was shot and killed. The guard who shot him said that Wakasa was trying to escape, but the Japanese Americans in the camp did not believe the guard. Most of the camps were many miles away from the coast, and often in rural areas. Many of the camps were in the desert, which was uncomfortable for many of the Japanese Americans who were not used to that type of climate. This also meant that even if somebody escaped, there would be nowhere for them to go.

In the camps, people had to stand in line to eat or to go to the bathroom.

One famous camp was Manzanar, which was in California. Many Japanese from Los Angeles and San Francisco were sent there. Other camps included Poston in Arizona and Minidoka in Idaho. There were a few camps outside of the western U.S., such as Jerome in Arkansas. Japanese Americans were often crowded into small spaces, such as race tracks, before being sent to the camps.

A grandfather and grandson at Manzanar. The elderly and very young children may have been more likely to get sick from the very hot and cold weather at the camps

The camps tried to provide medical care. Many of the people who worked in the camp hospitals were Japanese American doctors and nurses who lived in the internment camps. However, there were not enough doctors and nurses, and not enough medical supplies. Also, conditions at the camps helped cause some diseases. For example:

• Because the camps were so crowded, infectious diseases spread easily. These diseases included typhoid fever, smallpox, whooping cough, flu, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. The camps could give vaccines to prevent some of these illnesses, like typhoid fever and smallpox, but not others.
• Bad sanitation caused outbreaks of food poisoning at many camps.
• At camps in the desert, there was so much dust that people with asthma and breathing problems got worse.
• At camps in Arkansas, people got malaria from mosquitoes.

A total of 1,862 people died from medical problems while in the internment camps. About one out of every 10 of these people died from tuberculosis.

The end of internment

By 1943, the government allowed some Japanese Americans to leave the camps to work or go to school. However, the government would not let them return to the West Coast. Some Japanese Americans were even allowed to serve as soldiers in the U.S. Army, and many served with honor in Europe.

In 1944, the United States government said that it would stop putting Japanese Americans in internment camps. The people who were placed in the camps were given $25 and a bus ticket home. However, it would take more than 40 years for the government to apologize to Japanese Americans for what had happened. In 1988, the government apologized and paid a check $20,000 to people who had been sent to internment camps. However, some people had problems getting their checks.

Photo gallery

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  Official notice telling Japanese Americans they would have to leave their homes

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  A group of American citizens waiting to get on a bus that will take them to an internment camp

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  A Japanese American grocer put up these signs just before his internment

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  A young boy waits to be taken to an internment camp

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  Friends say good-bye as a Japanese American family waits for a bus to an internment camp

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  Heart Mountain Relocation Center, in Wyoming

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  Growing spinach at Tule Lake Relocation Center, a high-security center for people who "caused problems"

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  Children say the Pledge of Allegiance while at school in an internment camp

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  Soldier in a mostly Japanese American U.S. Army regiment

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  Graveyard at Granada Relocation Center in Colorado (1945)

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  U.S. President Reagan signs a law apologizing for internment and promising money to survivors (1988)

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  A monument at Manzanar, "to console the souls of the dead" (2002)

Japanese American Internment Media

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  A per-state population map of the Japanese American population, with California leading with 93,717, from Final Report, Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast 1942

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  The San Francisco Examiner, April 1942

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  A Japanese American shop, Asahi Dye Works, closing. The notice on the front is a reference to Owens Valley being the first and one of the largest Japanese American detention centers.

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  The baggage of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, at a makeshift reception center located at a racetrack

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  Dressed in uniform marking his service in World War I, a U.S. Navy veteran from San Pedro enters Santa Anita Assembly Center (April 1942)

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  Children wave from the window of a special train as it leaves Seattle with Bainbridge Island internees, March 30, 1942

• A Challenge to Democracy (1944), a 20-minute film produced by the War Relocation Authority

Other websites

• Colors of Confinement, photographs by Bill Manbo
• National Japanese American Memorial Foundation Archived 2018-04-03 at the Wayback Machine
• Photograph collection from the University of Utah's Marriott Library Archived 2010-06-10 at the Wayback Machine
• Smithsonian Education – Japanese American internment