In December 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. After the event America decided all Japanese, even our Japanese-Americans couldn’t be trusted. So the American government built internment camps to keep them in. These internment camps were made in isolated desert areas in western states like Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming. Over 12000 Japanese-Americans lived through this most of them who were legal, documented citizens. (This happened in 1942.)

Over a nine-month period over 22000 Japanese-Americans were shipped to one of ten internment camps. Some were even placed in one of eight camps in Canada. Because of the harsh conditions President Roosevelt called them “concentration camps.”

The camps were about 2 square miles and were often very hot or very cold. There had no electricity or running water in the barracks. A family of even 5 or 6 had to share a very small room around 25 by 20 ft. The barracks weren't built very well and there were cracks in the walls and the floor where the boards didn't touch together. Around 250 people had to share the same bath, toilet and laundry barrack. The bathroom for men didn't have any stalls just toilets along the wall. The women's bathroom didn't have any doors but there were walls on either side of the toilets. The dining was a barrack in the center of a group of barracks that people lived in. The meals a day usually cost $00.45 per person and there were about 300 to 250 people in the dining barrack at one time to eat the meals. There were also hospital buildings for people who were old and needed help and for people who were sick.

An average day in the life of an internee was much like ours. The first thing that they would do was wake up and go to bathroom, shower and get dressed. Then they would go to the dining hall and eat breakfast. Then the kids who would go to school and the adults would go to work at one of the jobs in the camps. The person we interviewed for this project was Amy Imai. She said that when she was in the camp she went to school everyday and that the school was on the other side of the camp about one mile away. She would walk there everyday with her classmates that lived by her and her brother. Amy's dad was a chef and he only got $16 dollars a month. The other jobs that were available were a doctor, nurse, seamstress, and teachers.

This is the buildings in the background are the barracks where thery lived. This is a picture of one of the camps. You can see how big it is.

But it wasn't that bad near the end of the period. Most of the internees were Christian church members. There wasn't a church to attend but the barracks could serve as one. Just like regular American freedom of religion even Buddhists could attend church when they wanted. The locations of the camps were in: Puyallup, Portland, Missoula, Bismarck, Heart Mountain, Amache, Crystal City, Rhower, Jerame, Santa Fe, Gila River, Minidoka, Topaz, Moab, Mayer, Poston, Pomona, Santa Anita, Tulare, Manzanar, Fresno, Pinedale, Salinas, Merced, Tanforan, Turlock, Stockton, Mento, Sacra, Marysville and Tule lake. When the internees were released from the camps they were handed $25 each and went on a train back to their home. Most people went back to nothing. Others had friends that were keping their things and land for them. Amy's family was one of the people who had nothing to go back to. She said that her family went into the farming industry. Her family had worked for a farmer and in return he gave them a home to stay in. She said that going back to nothing was the scariest part of going into and from the camps.

Sources: "University Archives", http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/Documents/wrapam.html.(9/11/06) Other Pages: Watch An Interveiw Of A Japanese Internee Who Was At One Of The Camps Watch An Animated Flash About Japanese Internment Links to other information: http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/Documents/wrapam.html