"Imagine that one day you received notice that you and your whole family must be ready to move within 48 hours. You could take only the possessions you could carry and no one would tell you when you would be permitted to return home. Sound like a bad dream? This happened to over 100,000 United States citizens and legal residents during World War II. Your job is to find out why." ~Martha Daly
Japanese American people were racially discriminated before the internment camps were created. The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 banned Japanese people from immigrating to America; Japanese Americans did not become citizens, but were aliens. Then in December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Japanese American racial discrimination worsened. On April 1st, 1942, the Executive Order 9066 was used to incarcerate over 100,000 Japanese American citizens.
The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 |
"Such pressures increases until 1908, when the governments of the United States and Japan quietly struck a so-called Gentleman's Agreement that, in effect, severely restricted subsequent immigration from Japan." ~ Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity by David G. Guitiérrez |
The Incarceration |
"We saw all these people behind the fence, looking out, hanging onto the wire, and looking out because they were anxious to know who was coming in. But I will never forget the shocking feeling that human beings were behind this fence like animals [crying]. And we were going to also lose our freedom and walk inside of that gate and find ourselves…cooped up there…when the gates were shut, we knew that we had lost something that was very precious; that we were no longer free."~ Mary Tsukamoto |
Japanese Americans forced to move to the relocation centers.