Internment camps were permanent detention camps that held internees from March 1942 until their closing in 1945 and 1946. Although the camps held captive people of many different origins, the majority of the prisoners were Japanese-Americans. There were ten different relocation centres, which were scattered all over the interior West, in isolated desert areas of Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Why were they set up??.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Pacific coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Japanese attacks on their cities, homes and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon and Washington, demanded that the residents of Japanese ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas. As a result of this pressure, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. More than two-thirds of those interned under the Executive Order were citizens of the United States, and none had every shown any disloyalty. In April 1942, internment camps were set up across the United States of America. Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Roosevelt in 1944, and the last of the camps was closed in March 1946.
What were they like?.
In 1943, all internees were forced to respong to questions intending to separate those "loyal" from those "disloyal" to the United States. Internees who refused to declare undivided loyalty to the United States were sent to Tule Lake, which became the "Segregation Centre." Resistance to the internment and to War Relocation Authority policies at Tule Lake was very strong, resulting in Army occupation, violence and marital law.
The internment camps that the Japanese lived in were like slums. Their houses were made of tar paper, which was a bad choice for the building huts in the desert.
