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Japanese Internment Camps: They Called Us Enemy

This guide was created to explore the topics in the 2022-2023 reading of "They Called Us Enemy" by George Takei

Japanese American Interment They called us Enemy Header image and text

Japanese American Internment in the United States resulted from a reaction to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the racial divide that was created.  As America entered WWII fear of the large Japanese population near the Pacific coast worried many Americans.  On February 19, 1942 president Franklin Rosevelt signed into effect executive order 9066 which authorized the deportation of both American citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent from "military areas" to "relocation centers" or "assembly centers" far from the western coast.  Japanese Americans were forced to quickly divest themselves of all they owned and report to be cataloged, inoculate, and shipped away to live behind barbed wire in these internment camps until the closing of the Tule Lake, the last of the segregation centers in 1946.

Books On the Japanse American Internment

Juvenile Books