Helen Murao Of Minidoka Essay

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On December 7, 1941 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The day after the bombing the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Two months after the bombing President Roosevelt signed an executive order to send all Japanese Americans to concentration camps. America feared that many Japanese Americans would remain loyal to their ancestry in Japan. Over 122,000 Japanese families were evacuated from their communities and sent to internment camps. The U.S. built ten camps in remote areas in seven different western states. The concentration camps were fenced with barbed wire and was guarded by soldiers. Most of the camps were not finished in time when the Japanese arrived. The United States took away the Japanese right to be free. The Japanese …show more content…

The guarded barbed wire fence was a symbol of the freedom they loss. Soldiers inspected every package mailed to the residents to make certain it contained nothing illegal or threatening. The guards patrolled around the camps twenty-four hours a day as a reminder to the Japanese American that they were trapped. Freedom was what the Japanese longed for during their time at the concentration camps. Most of the Japanese Americans saw themselves more as an American than Japanese. They were going to be faithful to the U.S. because America gave them freedom and the land they deserved. Larry Tajiri, a Japanese American newspaperman stated “We may have been a little ashamed of our faces as we walked through those crowded New York streets on that December night. We are Americans by every right, birth, education and belief, but our faces our those of the enemy”(Tajiri). They thought that what Japan did was wrong, they did not agree with their home country. Saburo Kido, president of the Japanese American Citizens League sent a telegram to President Roosevelt in Pearl Harbor’s aftermath stating that the Japanese Americans were stunned and horrified at the attack by Japan. Kido also stated in the telegram “We want to convey to you that we unequivocally condemn Japan for this precedented breach good

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