After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941, the U.S. War Department suspected that Japanese Americans might act as saboteurs or espionage agents, despite a lack of hard evidence to support that view. Out of this fear, on February 19, 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the U.S. military authority to exclude any persons from designated military areas along the Pacific coast. This led to the formation of the War Relocation Authority. Its mission was, according to a report at the time, to “take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of the war.”
Japanese Americans were given little time to settle their affairs. Because they were able to take only what they could carry to the internment camps, they were forced to sell the majority of their possessions, homes, and businesses. As a result, Euro-Americans were able to buy Japanese Americans’ property for well under value.
After being forcibly removed from their homes, Japanese Americans were first taken to temporary assembly centres. In some cases, they were housed in animal cells of empty livestock barns. From there they were transported inland to the internment camps, where they were isolated from the rest of American society. Between 1942 and 1945 a total of 10 camps were opened, holding approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans for varying periods of time in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas.
The camps were organized in army-style barracks, with barbed-wire fences surrounding them. Armed guards were posted around the camps and were instructed to shoot anybody who tried to leave. Because of this, there were instances of preventable violence. At Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, 63-year-old James Hatsuki Wakasa was shot and killed for simply walking near the fence. At the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, military police used tear gas on rioters. Nonetheless, these situations were more often the exception than the rule.
The camps themselves generally consisted of a mess hall, a school, a hospital, and barracks. Internees used common bathroom and laundry facilities, but hot water was usually limited. They lived in uninsulated barracks furnished only with cots and coal-burning stoves. These conditions made life in the hot summer and cold winter very difficult for the prisoners. Summers in hot, dry areas such as Arizona and freezing winters in places such as northern Wyoming were almost unbearable.
For the most part, the camps were run humanely by authorities, and internees did their best to establish a sense of community and to continue life as normally as possible. They worked to set up churches, schools, shrines, farms, newspapers, and more, which enabled them to make money. Many Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) imprisoned in the camps worked as nurses, teachers, carpenters, farmers, and cooks.
Children and teenagers, trying to make the best of their situation, learned how to play musical instruments, became Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and played American sports such as baseball and football. On different occasions, schoolchildren living in nearby cities or towns entered the camps and engaged in competition with the children who were prisoners. These games ostensibly sought to build a sense of a common identity between the two groups. However, the fact that one set of students could leave the camps while the others were forced to stay laid bare the gap between them.
School life resumed in the camps, albeit under dramatically changed circumstances. Japanese Americans who were teachers before internment remained teachers during it. Children were taught math, English, science, and social studies. In addition, the War Relocation Authority made sure that Americanization classes were also part of camp schools’ curriculum, which the authorities believed would ensure loyalty in future generations. Children took part in clubs, and school dances were held for entertainment.
Like the camps themselves, however, the schools were far from ideal. Because of overcrowding, classes were often held outside, and, because of a lack of funding, schools were often understaffed and underequipped. In some cases the student-teacher ratio was as high as 48:1.
On December 18, 1944, the U.S. government announced that all relocation centres would be closed by the end of 1945. With the end of internment, Japanese Americans began reclaiming or rebuilding their lives, and those who still had homes returned to them. The last of the camps, the high-security camp at Tule Lake, California, was closed in March 1946.
The internment took its toll on Japanese Americans. They typically spent some three years living in isolated prison camps in an atmosphere of tension, suspicion, and despair. Then when they were released and returned to mainstream U.S. society, they were subjected to hostility and discrimination.