Imagine getting taken out of your house and taken to a camp in the middle of nowhere because your ancestors were from a country that attacked America. Well this happened to over 100,000 families during World War 2.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order to send all Japanese families in the U.S. to internment camps until the end of the war. Some people thought it was an injustice to the Japanese rights. Others thought it was the correct thing to do to prevent spies.
Japanese families were sent to the camps not because they were guilty of something but because their parents, grandparents, or their ancestors were from Japan.
Even though we were fighting Germans and Italians U.S. security didn't send them to camps.
"Only days after the war broke out in 1941, hundreds of Japanese American draftees who were already in U.S. army uniform were discharged without explanation other than that it was "for the convenience of the government."
-The story of the National Japanese American Memorial
"After the war broke out (Pearl Harbor) all my white friends stopped talking to me and wouldnt have anything to do with me. Its not like I started the war"--Alyce Kurihari
"On December 8th at 8 AM, the morning after Pearl Harbor there was a knock on our door. It was the authorities that had come to get my father. They took him away and we didn't know were they took him."
-Lloyd Takahashi
Japanese families were sent to the camps not because they were guilty of something but because their parents, grandparents, or their ancestors were from Japan.
Even though we were fighting Germans and Italians U.S. security didn't send them to camps.
"Only days after the war broke out in 1941, hundreds of Japanese American draftees who were already in U.S. army uniform were discharged without explanation other than that it was "for the convenience of the government."
-The story of the National Japanese American Memorial
"After the war broke out (Pearl Harbor) all my white friends stopped talking to me and wouldnt have anything to do with me. Its not like I started the war"--Alyce Kurihari
"On December 8th at 8 AM, the morning after Pearl Harbor there was a knock on our door. It was the authorities that had come to get my father. They took him away and we didn't know were they took him."
-Lloyd Takahashi
Cemetery at Manzanar
