which discriminated directly against American citizens of Japanese ancestry. by closing the borders of the United States. to all persons of Japanese ancestry, whether citizen or alien" (Daniels, 27). Adding to the situation, the Japanese-Americans could not escape the many slanderous signs and newspaper articles depicting and describing them as "Nips", "Japs", and "yellow people". .
The incarceration of the Japanese-Americans in the internment camps would seem to be a focal point in the Japanese-American's loss of identity, and while it certainly did contribute to their identity loss, it did so through their loss of humanity and tradition (as all of these factors intertwine). More so, the evacuation of the Japanese-Americans from the camps is what left them grasping for some place in some society. The process of incarcerating the Japanese-Americans took only a few months; the evacuation, however, took almost four years (Smith, 73). The Japanese-Americans had just begun to adjust to life inside the camps when they were slung back out into a society and country who still viewed them as threats to their communities and country. Many of the Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated where farm workers and overseers pre-war, and as Daniels states in Prisoners without Trial, ".had they been left in California, many of these. would be running their own farms, reaping war time profits.instead of doing the same labor for minimum wage" (Daniels 74). The life the Japanese-Americans knew was destroyed, and their place in society was taken. Many returned to their previous homes only to find all of their belongings burned and destroyed. The Japanese-Americans were forced to try to restart life next door to Americans who hated them. Greeted only with violence, many Japanese-Americans decided to return to Japan in an effort to find belonging only to encounter ".a Japan that existed only in their dreams.
