In , Congress created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a bipartisan commission that conducted intensive historical research and public hearings across the country with more than witnesses. After years of public controversy and Congressional foot dragging, the U. By then, though, many of the older generation had already died, making it a bitter victory for Japanese Americans. The anti-Asian sentiment that enabled internment still lives on: Between March and February , Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that tracks incidents of discrimination and harassment against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States, received almost 3, reports of hate incidents.
Nearly 80 years after internment, Japanese Americans still must fend off threats to their civil rights, and even their lives.
Today, there are about 1. Nagata and Yuzuru J. Takeshita wrote in Japanese Americans are still affected by internment and its legacies—but resilience and strength are also part of their heritage.
All rights reserved. The U. In San Francisco, California, soldiers stand watch as luggage is loaded onto a truck bound for Japanese internment camps on April 29, Many returned to find they had lost everything. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London.
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Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. The more permanent relocation centers were not much better. The War Relocation Authority established 10 of these camps, mostly located in the West, although two were located in Arkansas which later consolidated to one in Rohwer, Arkansas.
The Army-style barracks built to house the evacuees offered little protection from the intense heat and cold, and families were often forced to live together, offering little privacy. The residents were not required to work, but the guard towers and barbed-wire fences surrounding the camps denied them the freedom to move about as they pleased.
Despite these conditions, the incarcerated Japanese Americans did what they could to make the camps feel as much like home as possible. They established newspapers, markets, schools, and even police and fire departments.
At the Rohwer War Relocation Center in southeastern Arkansas, Japanese American high school students had their own band, sports teams, clubs, and activities like senior prom and student council. In , the War Relocation Authority subjected all Japanese Americans in the camps to a loyalty test, in which they were asked to reject allegiance to the Japanese emperor and assert whether they were willing to serve in the US military.
Washington officials like Attorney General Biddle and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes urged President Roosevelt to end the relocation program as soon as possible, while several of the camp residents themselves challenged the program in court. The Japanese American relocation program had significant consequences.
The Japanese American community itself was also transformed by this experience. Before the war, most Japanese Americans adhered closely to the customs and traditions enforced by their oldest generation called Issei , which often deepened their isolation from mainstream American society. The experience of living in the camps largely ended this pattern for second-generation Japanese Americans called Nisei , who after the war became some of the best-educated and most successful members of their communities.
Star Shirley Temple had a special relationship with the Hawaiian Islands. In the prewar years, she made several tours of Hawaii, delighting local and military audiences. The largest population interned at Seagoville was In June the Seagoville alien enemy internment camp was closed and detainees were repatriated, paroled, or moved to other INS internment camps.
The camp received its first large group of prisoners on April 23, , and during the course of its existence housed more than 3, aliens. The United States Army took over the operation on October 1, , and from then until the end of the war it housed wounded and disabled German prisoners of war. To reduce hardships during internment and to reunite families, the INS originally intended to detain only Japanese at Crystal City, especially the many Latin-American Japanese families brought to the United States for internment pending repatriation.
Germans and Italians, however, were also held in Crystal City. Existing facilities were forty-one three-room cottages, one-room structures, and some service buildings. Eventually, the INS spent more than a million dollars to construct more than buildings on the camp's acres. Warehouses, auditoriums, administration offices, schools, clothing and food stores, a hospital, and many housing units were built.
Like the camps at Kenedy and Seagoville, the Crystal City internment camp provided jobs and revenue for the town. The first German internees arrived in December The first Japanese arrived from Seagoville on March 10, The population of the Crystal City camp peaked at 3, in May Languages spoken at Crystal City included Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, and English; ages of internees ranged from newborn to elderly.
The variety of prisoners added to the complexities of camp organization and administration. Camp officials tried to arrange housing so that similar races and nationalities would be together, but even so, strong differences emerged between those who wanted repatriation and those who wanted to stay in the United States or return to the country they were expelled from.
The camp was divided into separate sections for Germans and Japanese. Though no physical boundaries separated the two groups, they did not interact often. They had separate auditoriums, community centers, schools, and stores. Housing units consisted of triplexes and duplexes that shared toilet and bath facilities, three-room cottages with indoor toilet and bath, and plywood huts with central latrines and baths.
Except for the huts, all housing had cold running water, kitchen sinks, and oil stoves. Administrators assigned housing and set food allowances based on the age and size of families. Token money was issued accordingly, and families purchased food at a large grocery store.
Two separate, large canteens were called the German General Store and the Japanese Union Store; these stores took tokens like the central grocery. The majority of store positions were held by internees, including cashiers, store clerks, butchers, and warehouse workers.
The Japanese were provided with special foods, such as soy sauce, tofu, seaweed, dried shrimp, and large quantities of rice. Internees could participate in a paid-work program. Workers were paid ten cents an hour and employed in all aspects of camp organization. They planted vegetables, tended orange orchards and beehives, raised pigs and chickens, washed laundry, repaired clothes and shoes, manufactured mattresses, furniture, and clothes, and made sausage and bakery items.
Others worked in the stores, administration offices, hospital, or schools. Employment kept the internees busy and lessened the frustrations of internment.
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