Becoming Mama-San. Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

      On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed the U.S. Naval forces stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II. It was a huge shock to the American people as a whole, but people of Japanese descent felt an even deeper fear.

      In the weeks and months that followed, false rumors and panic spread about possible sabotage by Japanese people living in Hawaii and along the West Coast of the United States. Politicians, journalists, and others created a frenzy of anti-Japanese sentiment. The U.S. government enacted rules for Japanese living on the coast. The government limited our right to travel, and denied or limited our access to our bank accounts.

      Based on these fears, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. All people of Japanese descent on the West Coast were to be evacuated from their homes and placed in what the government called “internment camps.” We would soon learn that these were actually concentration camps where we were held against our will. Today, Japanese Americans consider these concentration camps, asserting that the word “internment” did not accurately describe the forced imprisonment.