- Temporary Detention Centers -
1. Were Japanese Americans given adequate care and accommodations as they were rounded up? Were they given assurances and clear information on what the future held for them?
- No, many families lived in horse stalls under unsanitary conditions, often by open sewers. Meals were inadequate and medical care was minimal. Toilet and bathing facilities were communal and devoid of privacy.
- Permanent WRA Camps -
2. Discuss the claim by the U.S. Government that the camps were for the protection of Japanese Americans. Were the barbed wire fences and guard towers meant to keep vigilantes out or Japanese American inmates in?
- The U.S. claimed the internment camps were for the protection of the Japanese Americans, but it was technically a prison. Barbed wire fences and guard towers with guns faced toward the camps. The towers and fences were meant to keep people inside the camps.
- Camp Life -
3. Were the camps "resettlement communities," or prisons? What’s the difference between the two?
- The camps were prisons. Prisons have barbed wire fences and guard towers like the internment camps did, but resettlement communities do not.
4. Did the War Relocation Authority take measures to protect family life and privacy?
- Family life deteriorated, as communal arrangement for all activities, including eating, encouraged children to spend time away from the family "home." Parental authority diminished.
- Questions of Loyalty -
5. How did Japanese Americans respond after being incarcerated without due process of law, to questions asking them whether or not they were unquestioningly loyal to this country?- The Nisei (second-generation, U.S.- born Japanese Americans) were understandably outraged. Among other citizens, loyalty was never questioned, yet the Nisei were once again asked to prove theirs. Also, they knew that, should their parents answer "no" to both questions, a "yes" on their part would mean certain physical and emotional separation from them.
- Tule Lake Segregation -
6. Were those who answered "no" to the loyalty questions clearly "disloyal" or were they voicing discontent with their treatment?
- For different reasons, some in the camps answered "no". Most of them were simply voicing their opinion.
- Draft Resisters -
7. Why did these young men resist being drafted into the military? Write or improvise a conversation between two brothers in an internment camp who make two different opposing decisions on the draft: one enlists, the other resists. What are their points of agreement, if any? How do they differ? Is one brother more patriotic than the other ?
- Some Nisei men resisted the draft on the grounds that their constitutional rights and those of their family members had been violated in the incarceration.
-Conversation:
Chang: I'm making the decision to enlist in the army.
Li: You can't be serious! It is an outrage that they want to draft us into the military after labeling us disloyal to this country.
Chang: I agree with what you're saying, but this may be our only chance to get out of this camp. I'm sick of these communal bathrooms with not privacy.
Li: You do what you have to do, but I can't bring myself to do it.
- They both agree it may be their only way to escape the internment camp. One brother is willing to enlist in the army, but the other brother is not. No one brother is more patriotic than the other. It is just a matter of opinion.
- Military Service -
What did it take to fight for a country that kept your family interned behind barbed wire?
- A sizeable number volunteered out of desire to prove their loyalty and in response to the urgings of the Army and the Japanese American Citizens League.
