Episode 309: Japanese Internment Camps: So Much for the 5th Amendment

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at a dark chapter in American history—Japanese Internment Camps. After the attack on Pearly Harbor back in 1941, paranoia and anti-Japanese sentiment reached an all time high in the US, and with the signing of Executive Order 9066, President Roosevelt forced all people in American of Japanese ancestry (citizens and non) into detainment camps to “prevent a second Pearl Harbor.” This was done in spite of the fact that no proof existed that American-based Japanese had anything to do with the attack and using evidence that was fabricated by a war-mongering general.

In total, roughly 120,000 Japanese were locked up by the US government (the entire population!). They were given between 2 and 11 days to pack up only what they could carry. They would lose their homes, their cars, any property they couldn’t take with them. Then, they were sent to Assembly Centers—typically fair grounds where they stayed in animal pens waiting to move to their new permanent homes at the Relocation Centers.

The Relocation Centers were miniature towns. These ten facilities housed between 8,000 and 18,000 people each. They were short on food and medicine at first, plagued by a couple of riots, and though the inmates had more freedom than a prison, the status of being a detainee was clear to those in the Japanese Internment Camps. Indeed, if you got too close to the perimeter, you were shot, and you couldn’t legally leave.

So, who did they let leave and why? What did the captives do for money and employment while they were forced to live in Japanese Internment Camps? What happened to their possessions back in their homes (and the homes themselves)? What was the loyalty oath, and what happened to those who didn’t sign it? Listen, laugh, learn.