Until he turned 11½, Isamu Shibayama’s childhood was idyllic.

His father was a successful textile importer and dress-shirt wholesaler in Lima, Peru. His house was staffed by servants. He was chauffeured to private school. He spent summers living on the coast with his grandparents, who owned a department store, and swimming in the Pacific.

Then, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Isamu’s father was playing tennis when news of the air raid was broadcast. He was immediately summoned home. His family and their friends were frightened. But even with anti-Japanese sentiment spreading in Peru, nobody predicted what would happen next.

The Shibayama family, joining nearly 2,000 others of Japanese heritage living in Peru, were rounded up by the police, turned over to American troops and shipped to prison camps in Texas and other states. They would remain there from 1942 to 1944, sharing the fate of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans who were also interned.

In boarding a chartered military troop ship bound for New Orleans, Isamu Shibayama embarked on what would prove to be a three-decade struggle to become an American citizen. Until then, his wife, Betty Shibayama, said last year, “he was a man without a country.”