What Is The History Of Japanese Internment

The history of Japanese Internment goes back to the surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. This day not only changed the lives of many Americans, but it also changed the lives of all Japanese immigrants as well as all American citizens of Japanese decent. The nation was in complete shock and the next day President Franklin Roosevelt labeled this day as “a day of infamy”(Inada, 30). During the war over 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps by the United States government, eliminating anyone who was a threat or potentially dangerous to our nation. “On February 19,1942, nearly ten weeks after the outbreak of war, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066” which excluded
All Japanese people were given a time frame in which they had to close up their businesses, pack up their belongings and sell their homes. They were only allow to take “only what they could carry” and were ordered to register at “designed civil control stations” where they were identified with tags and send to “assembly centers” until the internment camps were ready. (Wakida, xii) All together there was a total of sixteen assembly centers and ten interment camps located across the United States. These camps were located in deserts and racetracks and these people lived in horse stables filled with dirt and if lucky one light above that sat above the stable. Many Japanese felt a sense of resentment towards the American people because they forcing them to live in the most unsanitary and degrading
Isohei wrote these letters from the many high-security camps in which he was stationed to his family who were internees at a camp in Jerome, Arkansas. Unfortunately, Isohei was one of many Japanese men who were detained in high-security camps simply because he was a fisherman and the government felt he was a threat (Inada, 82). Isohei constantly wrote to his wife and two daughters as much as he could keeping them up to date with what was happening. His family would also reply and would send greeting cards when his birthdays came around. Isohei said in one of his letters: “Last year I celebrated alone my birthday at Missoula drinking 7-up but this year I forgotten my birthday. I know it by receiving your greeting card” (Inada, 85). To me, I felt like this was important because even know they were miles away from each other they still continued to celebrate life even in the most simplest ways. Their eagerness to remain close to one another in spirit showed greatly through the letters that were sent back and