Module 3: Looking Like the Enemy (1942-1945)
Why did many Japanese Americans retain a strong sense of ethnic identity and community after being in the United States for multiple generations?
On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked American military installations in Hawaiʻi, leading the United States to declare war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. Many Japanese Americans remember that day vividly. Members of the Uno family were on their way to church when they heard the news on the radio. “And that’s when life kind of changed for all of us,” remembered Kay Uno Kaneko, the youngest of the Uno children.
This module is about what happened to Japanese Americans like the Unos when Japan went to war with the US. Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and sent to inland concentration camps, while those in other parts of the country were selectively arrested and interned due to their ancestry. Life for most Japanese Americans would never be the same.
What forces led to the mass exclusion and incarceration of West Coast Japanese Americans?
What were the conditions and politics of life in American concentration camps?
What were the varied ways Japanese Americans responded to their wartime plight?
