A Camp of False Promises
Andrew LaCava
What the Japanese were Told...
After Pearl harbor, the United States government created many internment camps in order to relocate the Japanese-Americans living within the country. This was because any Japanese people living in the country were now descendants of the enemy, and were therefore a potential spy and or threat. Just for being Japanese the people were treated like enemies the entire time, not even letting them live in their own homes. As shown on the picture of the flyer, the Japanese didn't know where they were going or why they had to go, but they were promised assistance in selling and or managing their house while away, as well as a place to live. This did not turn out to be the case at all for many as shown in When the Emperor was Divine when the family returns home after years, their house is in awful condition and has not been taken care of whatsoever by anyone. And the living conditions were not good either. The Japanese were often time stuck in cell-like homes that were very small and cramped. This is quite unfavorable as many times these camps were located in desert areas leading to intense heat and a difficult place to live
What Actually Happened
Once arriving at these camps the Japanese had not gotten what they expected. Nowhere on that informative flyer does it say anything about working whatsoever, yet these people were put hard at work, forced to do much the the required manual labor. Essentially, the U.S government had taken these innocent people who had no relation to anything Pearl Harbor at all and turned them into workers being paid nothing without them even understanding what was happening. Along with this, the people who were working were barely fed properly, receiving meagerly portions of very bland meals. The Japanese in reality were misinformed or not informed at all about what most of the life turned out to be like in the internment camps. For example, the children who were in school, the schools in these camps were very unprepared and had barely any resources at all to teach. This realistically damaged the education of kids if they had to put up with this for multiple years