On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. On that day, Japanese Americans who were suspected as spies for Japan were rounded up and taken to Sand Island. These were Japanese school teachers, community leaders, fishermen, and more. They were taken because of their jobs: the teachers could teach the children that Japan is better than the U.S., the same for community leaders, and the fishermen were taken because they knew about the shorelines so they could have helped Japan know where they could attack. Though this is what was thought to be true, it was not. It was all false; there were no spies among the Japanese Americans already living in the U.S.A.

On February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order #9066 that ordered all persons of Japanese ancestry evacuated from the West Coast. Because the Japanese Americans living in the U.S.A. were part Japanese, the government suspected them as people who possibly communicated with Japan.

People sent to camps had to sell their property and their other belongings that they couldn't bring with them to camp. A woman owned a twenty-six room hotel and she had to sell it for $500.00 because she had only three more days to sell her property. Many of these people had to sell their things for a little amount of money, otherwise people wouldn't buy. They were taken by train if they were living on the mainland, and if they were coming from Hawaii, they came by boat and then train.

We got to interview a person that experienced going to the internment camps. The first camp that she went to was in Jerome, Arkansas. She told us that the trip from Hawaii to the mainland was seven days on a boat. Then they went on a train ride and that lasted for ten days. She said there were guards on the train with bayonets so no one asked where they were going. She also said that she thought that they were going to die.

http://www.du.edu/~anballar/Camp_Population.html

http://www.du.edu/~anballar/Origins_of_Evacuees.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8420/camps.html

http://members.aol.com/EARTHSUN/Manzanar.html

Manzanar by- Armor, John and Wright, Peter

Our House Divided by- Knaefler, Tomi Kaizawa

Interview- Mr. Uno

Interview- Mrs. Hara