How life changed for Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor
Sam Mihara and his family were forced into a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.In September 1940 Imperial Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Why?
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Forced to sell property before being “evacuated” into prison camps, many Japanese Americans were left with nothing.
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Public DomainPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt requests that Congress declare war against Japan on December 8, 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day, “a date which will live in infamy.”
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The prison camps were closed—but many Japanese Americans no longer had homes to return to.
Transcript
My name is Sam Mahara. I'm here to talk about what I remember during the difficult days during World War II when I was a prisoner of the United States of America
After Pearl Harbor, life became miserable for people of Japanese [descent] and, to some degree, Germans and Italians, because now we were at war.
President Roosevelt made many good decisions during the war, but he made a huge mistake on the question of what to do about Japanese and Germans and Italians in this country.
What he did was he relied on his military advisors, and what the military advisors suggested was the president signed an executive order.
And that order gives the authority to remove people. It gave that authority to the local military. It doesn't state Japanese, Germans, and Italians.
It simply said “I, the president,” giving authority to move. And he signed it. And with that signature, the military now took over what to do about this problem.
It turns out the general in charge of the Western section hated Japanese.
They didn't hate Germans. They didn't hate Italians, but they hated Japanese.
As a result, he ordered all Japanese, even part Japanese, to be removed.
Here’s a photo of a guard with a weapon literally forcing us out of our homes and putting on buses, make sure we get on the bus to take us to the prison camp.
There’s no question about it. We were imprisoned inside the United States.
After Pearl Harbor, life became miserable for people of Japanese [descent] and, to some degree, Germans and Italians, because now we were at war.
President Roosevelt made many good decisions during the war, but he made a huge mistake on the question of what to do about Japanese and Germans and Italians in this country.
What he did was he relied on his military advisors, and what the military advisors suggested was the president signed an executive order.
And that order gives the authority to remove people. It gave that authority to the local military. It doesn't state Japanese, Germans, and Italians.
It simply said “I, the president,” giving authority to move. And he signed it. And with that signature, the military now took over what to do about this problem.
It turns out the general in charge of the Western section hated Japanese.
They didn't hate Germans. They didn't hate Italians, but they hated Japanese.
As a result, he ordered all Japanese, even part Japanese, to be removed.
Here’s a photo of a guard with a weapon literally forcing us out of our homes and putting on buses, make sure we get on the bus to take us to the prison camp.
There’s no question about it. We were imprisoned inside the United States.