In years preceding World War II, Japanese were greatly mistreated but the true mistreatment did not start until the Japanese Internment. Japanese Internment was the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans in relocation camps. Although World War II is covered in most classes, the story of American citizens who were stripped of their civil liberties, on American soil, during that war is often omitted. This internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II remains of the most shameful events in American History.
The first wave of Japanese Americans arrived four decades before World War II. These people left their country and traveled to America hoping to acquire jobs, live a free life, and nevertheless start a new life.
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These areas were so uninhabitable that, more than a century before, the robust, land-hungry pilgrims of the American West had passed them. “One official who led a delegation that later inspected all the camps wrote, ‘As we visited one center after another, we became more and more impressed with the ingenuity of the government in finding such uniformly God-forsaken places for the camps.’” Some camps were greatly overcrowded. There people were housed in mess halls, recreation halls, and sometimes even latrines. Illness was wide spread due to so many people living in such small space. These camps also had limited doctors and nurses. “At Jerome, which served first as an assembly center and then as a relocation center, seven doctors were expected to care for 10,000 people.” Many people were housed in horse stalls at converted horse tracks. However, four days before there were still horses quartered in those stalls. Other apartments were former pigpens. The government had named them assembly centers when in actuality they were prisons. No person could leave them. Concrete and wire fencing surrounded them. Armed guards patrolling the areas. At night, spot lights from watchtowers beamed along the