It all started to get worse for the Japanese Americans when the Japanese ambushed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This act of aggression aggravated the already existent discrimination against the Japanese immigrants in America. It was said that within hours of the attack, FBI agents were sweeping California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii for the Japanese Americans. They arrested anyone of Japanese descent. The FBI focused on community leaders, teachers of the language, teachers of Japanese culture, and teachers of the martial arts.1 However, this was only the beginning for the Japanese Americans. Things only got worse for them from there on. To understand this whole event in history, however, you need a little background on the situation the Japanese Americans were in before the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was also a difference in the way that women were treated and the way that men were treated in during their detention in the internment camps. The suffering did not end when the camps were closed. The Japanese faced many obstacles and a lot of discrimination and hardships even after they were released from the internment. .
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Americans were already facing a large amount of discrimination. There were laws put into place to restrict their immigration, naturalization to the U.S., and even land ownership. These types of laws were put in place and enforced during the first four decades of the twentieth century.1 Yet despite all of this, they were still large amounts of Japanese (the Issei) and their American born offspring (the Nisei) living in the United States.1 In 1941, there were 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S.1 They formed large communities throughout the country. These communities were mostly farming communities because over half of the total amount of the immigrants came to the U.S. having been in some part of the agriculture business.
