Japanese American Internment Camps

In 1941, war broke out between Japan and the United States. Soon after, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an order allowing the military to name strategic areas, and exclude people from those areas.

The order was written to prevent spying or sabotage, but it was used to remove many Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. No one had evidence that any Japanese American person was a spy, or had planned to harm the American war effort.

The Japanese Americans were sent to prison camps, some for up to four years. They had to leave their jobs, their homes, the land they owned -- everything. In the end, over 120,000 people with Japanese ancestry were put in camps. Many of them were children, and many were American citizens. Some families had lived in the U.S. for generations.