Japanese-American Internment

Japanese American internment was the World War II internment of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast of the United States. The U.S. government ordered the internment in 1942, shortly after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally as a geographic matter. All who lived on the West Coast were interned, while in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. Sixty-two percent of
all the people being interned were American citizens.

Despite the lack of any evidence, Japanese Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. In the event of a Japanese invasion of the American mainland, Japanese Americans were feared as a security risk. Evacuation orders were posted in Japanese-American communities giving instructions on how to comply with the executive order. Many families sold their stores, their homes, and most of their assets. They could not be certain their homes and livelihoods would still be there upon their return. Because of the mad rush to sell, properties and inventories were often sold at a fraction of their true value.

Almost 65% of the interns were Japanese Americans born in the United States. It made no difference that many had never even been to Japan. Ten camps were finally completed in remote areas of seven western states. Housing was very basic, consisting mainly of tarpaper barracks. Families dined together at communal mess halls, and children were expected to attend school. Adults had the option of working to make $5 per day. The United States government hoped that the interns could make the camps self-sufficient by farming to produce food. But cultivation on arid soil was quite a challenge and did not work.

In 1988, 46 years later, Congress attempted to apologize for the action by awarding each surviving intern $20,000. While the American concentration camps never reached the levels of Nazi death camps as far as atrocities are concerned, they remain a dark mark on the nation's record of respecting civil liberties and cultural differences.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
http://caamedia.org/jainternment/