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Japanese-American Internment Camps

Page history last edited by Happy 13 years, 10 months ago

 

 

 

 

 

     The Japanese-American Internment Camps were very unusual due to the fact that half of the population living in them were children, and even though the conditions were terrible, they still found creative ways to have fun.  After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States reacted by placing any person living in America of Japanese decent into Internment Camps.  The living conditions in these camps were horrendous.  Women, men, and children were crowded into small, poorly built barracks.  Over 60,000 children lived in the camps.  There were a total of ten camps, all of which were located in the western region of the United States.  Even with all of the horrid conditions, the internees found so many ways to have fun by digging pools, building baseball diamonds, and creating gardens.  These people were truly amazing!

 

 

 

 

Children in the Camps

 

 

Many men, women, and children were crowded into small spaces   

 

 

     The lives of children in the Internment Camps changed dramatically after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Almost half of the internees were children, approximately 60,000 ("Internment History").  For fun, the children would run from barrack to barrack and play games.  Some of the games played were hide-and-go-seek and tag (Kent).  Teenagers would attend dances on Saturday nights at some of the ten different camps (Kent).  While many children had fun at the camps, thousands of them suffered because of lack of medical care.  A doctor at one of the camps explained that, “[There is] no milk for anyone over the age of 5” (Kent 52).  With the lack of nutrition, many former residents suffered.  One woman had to feed her baby water instead of milk (Life in).

 

 

Conditions in the Camps

 

 

These are the barracks where the internees lived.

 

 

The conditions in Internment Camps were terrible.  Before the actual camps were built, the Japanese were forced to live in temporary places.  Such places were amusement parks and racetracks like the Santa Anita Racetrack in southern California (Kent).  Whole families would live inside one-room cells (McGill).  These rooms were in poorly built barracks.  The barracks were constructed of thin wood that was hastily nailed together (McGill).  Along with the poor construction, thousands of Japanese were faced with poor medical care.  Studies have shown premature death among interned Japanese as opposed to non-camp residents (“Internment History”).  The internees had no privacy either.  One young girl describes how, “Large searchlights next to the towers rotated constantly” (Kent 49). 

 

 

 

 

Recreation in the Camps

 

The camp residents swam for fun.

 

 

While the Internment Camps were awful, the 120,000 internees made the best of it ("Internment History").  At one of the ten camps, the Hunt Camp near Minidoka, they built a baseball diamond (Minidoka Internment).  Also at the Hunt Camp, which was located in southern Idaho, the internees dug out two swimming pools (Minidoka Internment).  Families made their barracks feel more like home by creating rock gardens (Minidoka Internment).  Women in the camps had free time on their hands and started participating in activities such as sewing and meeting up with friends that they made at mess halls and public laundry rooms (Kent).  Now with all of the spare time women had they could, “…pursue interests outside the home” (Kent 66).

 

 

References

 

A, A. Executive Order 9066: Japanese Internment Camps. Discovery Education streaming. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2010. <http://player.discoveryeducation.com/>.

 

Internment Camps. 7 Dec. 2007. AP Images. N.p., 13 Dec. 2007. Web. 10 May 2010. <http://apimages.ap.org/>.

 

INTERNMENT CAMPS. 5 Dec. 2006. AP Images. N.p., 5 Dec. 2006. Web. 10 May 2010. <http://apimages.ap.org/>.

 

“Internment History.” Children of the Camps. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2010. <http://www.children-of-the-camps.org/‌history/‌index.html>.

 

Japanese-Americans Interned at Santa Anita. 2006. discoveryeducation.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2010. <http://player.discoveryeducation.com/‌index.cfm?guidAssetId=C835E854-F772-4D2B-B02E-569EA5AD37FC&blnFromSearch=1&productcode=US>.

 

Kent, Deborah. The Tragic History of the Japanese-American Internment Camps. Berkely Heights: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2008. Print.

“Life In Japanese Internment Camps.” ThinkQuest. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2010. <http://library.thinkquest.org/‌TQ0312008/‌bhjic.html>.

 

McGill, Sara Ann. “Internment of Japanese Americans.” Middle Search Plus. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2010. <http://web.ebscohost.com>.

 

“Minidoka Internment National Monument.” Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 May 2010. <http://go.grolier.com/>.

 

Siasoco, Ricco Villanueva, and Shmuel Ross. “Japanese Relocation Centers.” infoplease. Pearson Education, Inc., n.d. Web. 11 May 2010. <http://www.infoplease.com/‌spot/‌internment1.html>.

 

Tanaka, Joe. Swimming at Minidoka, 1944. N.d. flickr from Yahoo. N.p., 7 May 2010. Web. 10 May 2010. <http://www.flickr.com/‌photos/‌imlsdcc/‌4586344829/>.

 

 

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