Japanese American Internment -- WWII

The December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the military forces of the Empire of Japan ignited wartime panic across the United States, in turn causing long-simmering local prejudices against Japanese Americans to boil over. Despite a lack of credible absence of credible evidence of sabotage or espionage by Japanese Americans, calls for the mass removal of Japanese Americans grew louder. Amidst mounting pressure on the federal government to contain the alleged threat posed by the Japanese-American community, Executive Order 9066 was issued forth on February 19, 1942.

The order set the stage for mass forced removal, separating families and irrevocably diminishing the interdependent communities that had formed in the nihonmachi enclaves. What followed was a period of incarceration without due process and suspension of civil liberties en masse. 

Then came the removal orders, sometimes delivered by armed military personnel. Japanese-American families along the West Coast were allowed little time to prepare for uncertain days ahead. The orders often allotted only 48 hours to report to assembly centers, a euphemistic label affixed to hastily erected temporary detention facilities in places like the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington, and the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Pavilion in Portland, Oregon.

Families were directed to bring only what they could carry; everything else was to be left behind. Clothing and legal documents were essential, but many also found ways to take with them photographs, sentimental items, and mementos of Japan. These tokens would later become touchstones of their identity and reminders of what once was. For most, preparing to leave meant selling off family homes, businesses, and farmland for pennies on the dollar. Amidst this great loss there are also stories of neighbors and community members offering an outstretched hand of friendship: some offered to take on property or store belongings until the removal orders were lifted, others promised to watch over pets entrusted to their care.