Dust of Eden (8 page)

During World War II, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced from their homes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and in response to prejudiced fears that Japanese Americans were spies. The entire West Coast population of Japanese Americans was evacuated. Two-thirds of them were American citizens. They were often given less than a month to sell their properties and put their affairs in order. Uprooted from their lives and tagged like luggage, they brought only what they could carry to the camps.

At the relocation camps, internees lived in cramped wooden barracks that lacked plumbing and adequate protection from heat and cold. What many remember most about the camp experience is standing in line—for mess hall, laundry, coupons, jobs. Yet internees strove to maintain a sense of normalcy by joining clubs, cultivating the desert land, and having parties.

The first-generation Japanese Americans, the Issei, tended to live by the stoic Japanese principle known as
gaman
, which means to bear hardship silently. The Nisei, the second-generation Japanese Americans, questioned the unfair treatment by the government. Nonetheless, many chose to remain loyal to America. Some internees volunteered to join the army, and despite the prejudices they faced, the Japanese American regiment became the most decorated infantry regiment in the history of the United States military.

When the war ended and internees left the camps in 1945, many found their homes occupied, their jobs gone, and were subjected to unfair treatment. It was not until 1988 that the U.S. government paid reparations to the surviving internees.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Mariko Nagai

978-1-4804-7541-0

Published in 2014 by Albert Whitman & Company

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