WORLD WAR II
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor, launching the United States into World War II. The ensuing panic caused by the bombing of Pearl Harbor resulted in the establishment of internment camps in the United States. The United States government built ten camps in the uninhabitable parts of the country’s interior to house Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast of the United States. The ten camps included:
Poston and Gila River in Arizona
Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas
Manzanar and Tule Lake in California
Amache in Colorado
Minidoka in Idaho
Topaz in Utah
Heart Mountain in Wyoming
Although technically not concentration camps, these facilities had barbed-wire fences, guard towers, searchlights, and armed military guards.
The internment camps originated to house the entire Japanese American population of the West Coast. The idea was to separate Japanese Americans from the rest of the population because some government officials believed them a threat to the security of the United States. In truth, 77,000 out of the 120,000 imprisoned Japanese Americans were United States citizens, the Nisei population born and raised in America. The remaining 40,000 included their parents, the first generation immigrants from Japan.
Choose a link to explore portions of oral histories recorded with Japanese Americans interned in camps during the war:
RICHARD HENMI (nisei)
MICHEAL HOSOKAWA (sansei)
PAUL MARUYAMA (issei)
PETER MORIMOTO (issei)
GEORGE SAKAGUCHI (nisei)
PAULINE SAKAHARA (nisei)
Explore government documents concerning Japanese Americans from World War II:
