Hezekiah Baker
12/8/2016
National History Day Project: Research
opic: Enduring Prejudice-Japanese Americans stance on Japanese Internment
T
Camps
Book: Farewell to Manzanar By: James D. Houston and Jeanne
Wakatsuki Houston
Main Plot:
"The shacks were built of one thickness of pine planking covered
with tar paper, They sat on concrete footings, with about two feet of open
space between the floorboards and the ground." (chapter 2-Shikata Ga
Nai)
"Each barracks were divided into six units, sixteen by twenty feet, about the size
of a living room, with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and an oil stove for
heat. (Chapter 2 - Shikata Ga Nai)
The setting of Manzanar, is dusty and sand covers the area. They were still
continuing on building sixteen more blocks to Manzanar. Skies were clear, but icy
gusts of winds would buffer the barracks through the floorboards. Jeanne's
mother is getting tired of living in their kind of conditions, but her sons and
Jeanne try to make the best of it.
Food was never always great but there was always enough to fill you up. "10,000
people on an endless promenade inside the square mile of barbed wire that was
the wall around our city." There included a camp hospital. Jeanne's father comes
back in September 1942. Jeanne's two sister in-laws are pregnant. A first
newborn has arrived and is named George in honor of Papa's arrival.
Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/manzanar/section1.rhtml (used sparknotes to get
summary due to me not being able to find the actual text online but i read the book in
10th grade)
Citation:Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki., and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar.
Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000. Print.
Hezekiah Baker
12/8/2016
National History Day Project: Research
opic: Enduring Prejudice-Japanese Americans stance on Japanese Internment
T
Camps
Article:At 92, A Japanese-American Reflects On The Lessons Of Internment
Camps
Major points:
When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga
(then Aiko Yoshinaga) was a senior at Los Angeles High School.
That spring, Japanese-American families on the West Coast were rounded up
and sent to internment camps.
The Yoshinaga family was sent to the Santa Anita, Calif., detention center, and
later to Jerome, Ark. Meanwhile, Yoshinaga and her new in-laws were sent to
Manzanar, near Death Valley. Yoshinaga remembers their first day as hot and
dusty, even though it was only April. The barracks where the family lived were
crowded and sparsely decorated.
She remembers being given a canvas bag and being told to fill it with hay for use
as a makeshift mattress.
The only thing that was in the apartments when we got there were army metal
beds with the springs on it, and a potbellied stove in the middle of the room. That
was the only thing. No chest of drawers, no nothing, no curtains on the windows.
It was the barest of the bare.
Source:http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-at-92-a-japanese-american-reflects-on-thehardships-of-internment-camps/
Citation: "At 92, A Japanese-American Reflects On The Lessons Of Internment
Camps." OPB. Ed. Lauren Migaki. NPR, 7 Dec. 2016. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.
Hezekiah Baker
12/8/2016
National History Day Project: Research
opic: Enduring Prejudice-Japanese Americans stance on Japanese Internment
T
Camps
Article: JAPANESE EVACUEES RECALL LOSS OF PROPERTY DURING
INTERNMENT
Major Point:
Mas Setos family was evacuated to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in
Wyoming in 1942, where roughly 14,000 people of Japanese descent were
incarcerated over three years during World War II. With little time to pack and
prepare to leave their homes, many Japanese families hastily sold belongings for
whatever price they could.
Back in 1942, They had about a week to dispose of everything they had, Inaba
said. Youre not going to get a good deal if everyone knows youve got a week to
get rid of it.
Inaba said, recalling stories from his family and other members of the local
Japanese community. Both of those guys were very, very helpful when the
Japanese returned to the Valley.
But even with that help, the few Japanese families who did return to the Yakima
Valley after internment mostly had to start over from scratch.
Source:http://www.yakimaherald.com/pearl-harbor/articles/japanese-evacuees-recall-los
s-of-property-during-internment/article_bb40827c-bb3e-11e6-8785-8bb4965f3e92.html
Citation: "Japanese Evacuees Recall Loss of Property during Internment." Yakima
Herald-Republic. Ed. Molly Rosbach. Yakima Herald-Republic, 05 Dec. 2016. Web. 08
Dec. 2016.
Hezekiah Baker
12/8/2016
National History Day Project: Research
opic: Enduring Prejudice-Japanese Americans stance on Japanese Internment
T
Camps
Article: At Internment Camp, Exploring Choices of the Past
Main Points:
Nearly 400 Japanese-Americans journeyed from June 30 to July 3 to this remote
corner of Tule Lake, California; where 18,789 people of Japanese ancestry were
incarcerated during World War II.
Of the 10 internment camps in which about 120,000 Japanese-Americans were
confined during the war, it was Tule Lake that held those branded disloyal, the
ones who answered no to two critical questions in a loyalty test administered by
the federal government.
For decades, the no-noes themselves never explained what lay behind their
answers. Most, in fact, never spoke about Tule Lake at all.
In early 1943, about a year after Japanese-Americans were rounded up into the
camps, the American authorities, seeking Japanese language speakers in the
military, distributed a loyalty questionnaire to all adults. Question No. 27 asked
draft-age men whether they were willing to serve in the armed forces.
No. 28 asked whether detainees would swear unqualified allegiance to the
United States and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the
Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government.
Anything except a simple yes to the two questions meant relocation to Tule
Lake, which became the most heavily guarded of the camps. Army tanks were
stationed here, reinforcing the security provided by 28 guard towers and a
seven-foot-high barbed wire fence.
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/japanese-americans-seek-answer
s-at-internment-camp.html
Citation: Onishi, Norimitsu. "At Internment Camp, Exploring Choices of the Past."
The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 July 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.
Hezekiah Baker
12/8/2016
National History Day Project: Research
opic: Enduring Prejudice-Japanese Americans stance on Japanese Internment
T
Camps
Article: Lessons from a Japanese Internment Camp
Main Points:
The attitude toward Japanese-Americans in 1942, when the government interned
more than 100,000 men, women, and children in camps around the country, has
obvious parallels today. Government authorities saw an entire ethnic group as a
potential national security threat because of its supposed ties to a hostile power
abroad.
Trump ally Carl Higbie recently cited Japanese internment camps during World
War II as a precedent for a proposed registry of Muslims in the U.S.
Wu describes a bleak environment in the camps in Arkansas, located in
swampland surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers manned by armed
guards. Prisoners were forbidden radios or any other source of information about
the outside world. Overcrowded living quarters forced families to share one-room
apartments with strangers. Food was insufficient, and stagnant water bred
mosquitos, which spread disease.
Formerly interned Japanese-Americans are now speaking out against Donald
Trumps proposed registration of Muslims.
Of course, after the camp closed in 1944, most of their prisoners did find new
places in U.S. society, even in the face of racist hostility. But, as we can see from
formerly interned Japanese-Americans who are now speaking out against the
registration of Muslims, the experience was something they wouldnt easily
forget.
Source:http://daily.jstor.org/lessons-from-a-japanese-internment-camp/
Citation: "Lessons from a Japanese Internment Camp." Jstor Daily. Ed. Livia Gershon.
Jstor Daily, 5 Dec. 2016. Web. 8 Dec. 2016.
