Between the time of the attacks and the time of the internment, there was backlash by Americans. They wanted to get back at the Japanese and avenge the American soldiers’ life. So they attacked the Japanese and their property. They painted signs and made the Japanese fell unsafe and threatened. Then Executive Order 9066 came out and removed all the Japanese off of the west coast. Japan’s largest minority population in Seattle’s International District was gone. All the Japanese businesses and homes were deserted.

In the internment camps, conditions were horrible. There were thousands of people crammed together in the middle of nowhere. An often overlooked fact is that this executive order didn’t just apply to the Japanese. It also applied to Italian and German immigrants, although for them it was less severe and for less people.

When the Japanese returned to their deserted businesses they found them in bad condition. They also found resistance and dislike. Later on, though, the United States changed its attitudes toward the Japanese and in 1952, the U.S. gave the Japanese the right to become naturalized citizens (Sucheng, Chan). Then in 1976, Executive Order 9066 was repealed by President Ford (Densho). This was a good start to repair the damage that had been done. It continued in 1988, when President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which gave all the Japanese that were interned in the internment camps 20,000 dollars (Densho). The Japanese continued to rebuild their lives and live on.