In February of 1942, not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military removed thousands of Americans of Japanese descent from their homes. Most of them were full citizens who had been born and raised in the United States.
Families had only a few days to get their affairs in order before reporting to relocation centers, mostly in Western states. Roosevelt’s order affected about 120,000 Japanese Americans, including 17,000 children.
Writer and poet Brandon Shimoda, who is a fourth-generation Japanese American, says the impact of incarceration didn’t end with the war…