japanese internment camps
... Japanese people had to surrender their rights to the government and leave their homes and their belongings (57). Ooka Shoei also states the Japanese people could take only what could be carried, and they could only take clothing, bedding, linens and kitchen utensils (58-59). The government regulated everything that the Japanese could take with them. Once Executive Order 9066 was enforced, the Japanese rights were taken away from them. When leaving his home, a young Japanese boy said, “You never thought such a thing could happen to you, but it has. And you feel all tangled up inside because you do not quite see the logic of having to surrender freedom in a country that you sincerely feel in fighting for freedom” (Davis 53). Most Japanese prisoners did not understand the reason for internment and many people today still do not understand. Also, the Japanese Americans were treated as enemies. According to Japanese prisoners, barbed wire surrounded the camps and armed policemen watched from above (“Museum of the City of San Francisco” par. 12). The prisoners were surrounded like the Jews in concentration camps in Germany, while we were fighting a war against Germany nonetheless! At the time, the government was in total control over the prisoners and the prisoners had no rights. Also the government mandated that all prisoners needed to wear a tag with a number on it. The interned citizens were not known by names; they were known by numbers. Many of the prisoners couldn’t believe what was happening. Their normal lives were taken from them, and they were forced to live like enemies for 3 years. The innocent had become the guilty because of their ethnic back round. Many people believed that America was a place for freedom, but now, who was truly free? The barracks, where the Japanese Americans lived, had unsuitable living conditions. According to a prisoner in the camps, the barracks were hot in the summer and cold in the winter (“A More Perfect Union” par. 10). The barracks were poorly constructed and the temperature inside the barracks was never suitable for living. This prisoner also acknowledged that the barracks did not meet the minimal standards for military housing (“A More Perfect Union” par. 10). The government officials who were in charge of the construction of the barracks did not care about the well being of the people who were to live inside. The barracks were constructed as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Daniel S. Davis, the author of Behind Barbed Wire, notes the barracks were twenty by twenty-five feet per family (71). The living areas for the families were small and compact. Davis also writes that the rooms were bare and people made furniture out of wood and tried to make the barracks look more like home (71). The Japanese Americans struggled to live in these barracks. They tried to make the barracks more like home by making furniture but the barracks in which they lived were not their homes. The prisoners missed their houses, farms, and properties greatly during the period of internment. The internment camps also lacked privacy. Ooka Shohei wrote that there was one bath, laundry, and toilet building for more than 250 people (75). The Japanese Americans were forced to shower with others and many of them felt degraded by the experience. Betty Kozasa, a prisoner, stated, “The degration of it all, having to go to shower with 150 people at one time and no shower curtains… these are the things that rankle and stay with me” (qtd. in Davis 61). The prisoners showered, bathed, and even used the toilet together. These degrading experiences remained in the prisoners’ mind throughout their lives. The Japanese prisoners were irritated about the living conditions, but many were more concerned with the racial issues. Miyuki Hirano, a prisoner, remembers boarding a truck and hearing shouts of “Jap, go home” (Grapes 57). The mistreatment of the Japanese people in the camps was atrocious. According to Davis, an elderly man was shot and killed by...