It all started on December 7, 1941 at 7:00 a.m. when Japan attacked U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The next day the U.S. declared war on Japan. The new fear of Japanese Americans spread quickly. Whites were afraid that their neighbors could be spies and plan to sabotage military bases. Americans begun to discriminate Japanese people living in United States. They said: “Once a Jap, always a Jap!” Signs like: “No Japs wanted”, “Japs keep moving”, and many others were everywhere. Immigrants from Japan known as Issei (the first generation Japanese in America) wanted to adapt to life in America as quickly as possible. They learned English, worked hard and try to became real Americans. However, they still couldn’t work in manufacturing, construction, or buy a land. Their children, Nisei, were the first generation born in America and therefore were automatically U.S. citizens according to the law. Also, Nisei had some prerogatives; their parents didn’t have, like own a land. Nisei grew up in America and they became more Americanized as their parents. They experienced two cultures- Japanese and American. They tolerated and understood Japanese traditions, but they did not follow them so closely. Their life became more similar to life of American children. They spoke the same slang, dressed the same and enjoyed the life the same although they were still seen as not real Americans in the eyes of society. Official reaction against Japanese Americans came in February 1942 when president Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This law authorized the removal of all people of Japanese ancestry from the western United States. The end of 1942 moved more than 110,000 men, women, and children moved to internment camps. They were taken away from their homes, lost their jobs and property. They could take only things they were able to carry with them. They left everything they once knew and moved to camps, where they were kept under fence. In camps, there were also several watchtowers, but Japanese Americans didn’t try to escape. They waited calmly for the day, when they will be free as any other citizen of United States of America.
Some of the boys and men in the internment camps wanted to show their patriotism and joined the U.S. army. First, the government didn’t want them, even existing Japanese American soldiers were discharged. But as months passed, U.S. military needed all soldiers it could get.

In particular, the Japanese Americans in the army were profitable, because they could translate Japanese documents and monitor radio traffic in the Pacific. Ironically, most Nisei volunteers couldn’t speak Japanese that well, so they had to attend military school to learn thru language. Internment didn’t cover only Japanese Americans in U.S., but it also included Italians in Britain, Japanese in Canada and Europeans in Southeast Asia.
The end of internment in U.S. came in December 1944 when Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mitsuye Endo and declared it unconstitutional. All loyal Japanese Americans were now free to return to their homes on the West Coast, if they had any.
Some had to start their life all over. In 1945, Eugene Rostow, a law professor at Yale University, described the internment as the “worst wartime mistake”.
Yoshiko Uchida, a woman, who was in the internment camp, says in her book The Invisible Thread:
“I also hope they will learn to see Japanese Americans not in the
usual stereotypic way, but as fellow human beings. For although
it is important for each of us to cherish our own special heritage,
I believe, above everything else, we must all celebrate our common
Humanity.”.

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Japanese internment