Get Life In A Japanese American Internment Camp - Wellstone Spps

While living in overcrowded conditions behind barbed wires, these Americans attempted to bring normalcy to their lives, they created newspapers, schools, markets, police forces, and fire fighting squads. While their families were confined, more than 33,000 Japanese Americans played a major role in the war effort.

Manzanar War Relocation Center People at the camps tried to establish some sense of community. Residents were allowed to live in family groups, and the internees set up schools, churches, farms, and newspapers.

Seventy-four days after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066. The order forced over 110,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes in California, Washington, and Oregon. ... The people forced into camps were deprived of their liberty, a basic freedom of the American Constitution.

They were located in isolated areas that no one else wanted to live in such as deserts or swamps. They would have very hot summers and very cold summers. Each camp had their own administration building, school, hospital, store, and post office. Most of the adults found work to do.

Inexpensive foods such as wieners, dried fish, pancakes, macaroni and pickled vegetables were served often. Vegetables, which had been an important part of the Japanese Americans' diet on the West Coast, were replaced in camp with starches.

Internees in most cases lost their homes, businesses and possessions when they were interned. Despite this, many Japanese Americans thought that the best way to prove their loyalty to the United States was by participating in activities that aided the war effort, including making uniforms and parachutes.

Internees lived in uninsulated barracks furnished only with cots and coal-burning stoves. Residents used common bathroom and laundry facilities, but hot water was usually limited. The camps were surrounded by barbed-wire fences patrolled by armed guards who had instructions to shoot anyone who tried to leave.