Why Did Japanese Immigrants Enter WWII

Japanese immigrants first came to the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s, when federal legislation that excluded further Chinese immigration created demands for new immigrant labor. Railroads in particular recruited Issei. Before the War the Japanese were able to get mainly manual labor jobs such as this, no matter what their educational status was. This discrimination only increased during the war. Initially the U.S was unwilling to enter the war (and who could blame them after the disasters of the First World War?) December 7th, 1941. On this day the lives of all Japanese American citizens as well as Americas war status. Many Nisei and Issei were sentenced to internment camps during the war, forced to sell their businesses. Kazuko and her family
(as well as many other Japanese Americans during this time) were forced to relocate to Idaho. She chronicles the virtual loss of her rights as an American citizen. Many Japanese Americans tried to also change their names during this time to prove that they were loyal to this country. Kazuko she her family were "evacuated" to the Puyallup Assembly Center before being relocated another time to the internment camps in Idaho. In many ways the Americans actually reflected what the Germans were doing during WWII to the Jews. Although it wasn’t to the same extent as the Germans, many things reflect over, such as the internment camps and how they were treated, “We rolled ourselves into army blankets like jellyrolls and slept on the bare floor…we got up stiffly from the floor, and exercised violently to start circulation in our paralyzed backs and limbs. We jammed our blankets into the long narrow sea bag, and we carefully tied the white pasteboard tag, 10710, on our coat lapels”. They were given numbers and tags. The conflicts of war caused an entirely innocent group of American citizens to suffer based solely on their heritage.