Prisoners at Home: Everyday Life in Japanese Internment Camps 

Relocation

Hum Fay, et al. vs. Baldwin, et al. records, 1898

In the 1860s, a devastating recession in Japan sent thousands of men and women heading toward the United States in search of new jobs and opportunities. Of the approximately 200,000 who first relocated to Hawaii, nearly all later moved to the West Coast of the US mainland to do agricultural work and operate small businesses. A pact between Japan and the United States in 1908 put a ban on unskilled immigrant laborers, slowing the influx of Japanese men and women relocating. These first-generation Japanese immigrants (known as Issei) and their American-born children (known as Nisei) still thrived in the face of a climate of racism and distrust that permeated US culture.
From the time of their arrival in the United States, Japanese immigrants, and other Asian immigrant groups, faced systematic discrimination from the American government and public. The Japanese and Korean Exclusion League (which later became the Asiatic Exclusion League) was established in May 1905. Other organizations followed, like the Anti-Jap Laundry League in 1908, which was formed by laundry worker unions with slogans asserting their need to maintain “the white man's standard in a white man's country” by boycotting Japanese-run laundries. Other organizations, like the Native Sons of the Golden West, would take anti-Japanese stances throughout the early 1900s, asserting that they needed to protect a California “given by God to a white people.” Legislation banned Japanese Americans from owning land or property, and laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924 banned "undesirable" immigration from Asian countries, including Japan.

1915, the Utah Japanese Association, forerunner to the JACL. All members were Issei and non-citizens as they were denied citizenship

Road to the Camps

Home and Family

Education and Sports

Employment

Religious Practices

Leaving the Camps Behind

Los Angeles, California. Reading bulletins in Japanese language in "Little Tokyo" 

National Archives at College Park - Still Pictures

National Archives and Records Administration

Issued only two months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced evacuation and relocation of any person in undefined “military areas.” This order, premised on the assumption that all people of Japanese heritage were potential spies, moved Japanese Americans from more “dangerous” West Coast areas to remote locations in the country’s interior. Its logic dictated that when Japanese Americans were kept under surveillance, restricted from using traditional communication, and physically removed from bustling coastal cities that were geographically closer to Japan, they were less capable of assisting in another attack on US shores.
In just a few months, Japanese American families on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes behind and begin the long process of deportation. First came curfews and then bulletins posted in public areas informing them when residents from particular areas should report for evacuation and instructing them to bring only bedding, clothing, and personal effects. From March through May 1942, Japanese Americans were quickly assembled and removed from areas in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington, where they owned property, attended schools, and had built communities for decades. Families were forced to abandon their homes, pets, furniture, and other items that would not make the journey with them. Japanese deportation and incarceration was supported by many white farmers who resented Japanese American farmers. Even more sympathetic neighbors and teachers did little to stop the removal of the Japanese Americans who lived among them.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

Executive Order 9066: authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe military areas

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Map_of_World_War_II_Japanese_American_internment_camps.png

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Prisoners at Home: Everyday Life in Japanese Internment Camps

Evacuation

Evacuation