(upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) - [Narrator] After Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced removal and imprisonment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
Two thirds were American citizens.
- [Alice] Then all of a sudden we were the enemy, even though we had no part of the invasion we were treated as though we were.
- All of a sudden my Japaneseness became very aware to me.
I no longer felt that I'm an equal American.
- [Narrator] The Japanese Americans were given only six days to pack, sell or store their belongings.
They could take only what they could carry.
- They lost everything.
Their whole life was there, and they lost it all.
All the things that they've accomplished, they lost.
- Not only did you have a case where your country was turning, you know, its back on you but your whole life was disrupted.
- It was all taken away.
They lost everything.
They had to move so fast that they weren't able to salvage anything.
- [Narrator] Most Japanese Americans had to sell their businesses and property for only a fraction of its value.
- It's like your worst garage sale.
And, you've got so much time and you try to make as much money as you can, but whatever you can't sell, you've gotta give up.
- Everybody was taken advantage of because they knew that they had to leave.
- You would have what we called the vultures descend into the community where, you know, they realized they could buy things, you know, pennies on the dollar.
And so, it was such a devastating time for the community, not only in terms of the loss of freedom, but a loss of property.
- He had a taxi cab business, with four cabs, but he had 48 hours to divest, you know, the cabs, so he wound up leaving them parked on the city street with the keys in the ignitions.
- [Narrator] In a matter of months, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced from their homes and moved to remote inland incarceration camps across the country.
- [Tom] And so there was this, you know, sense of devastation, you know, why us?
I mean, they were American citizens.
They had done nothing wrong, and now they were placed behind barbed wire, without a clear idea of what their future was gonna be like.
- [Narrator] In the camps, privacy was basically non-existent.
They were designed like military camps, with barracks, a mess hall and open-style latrines, with no stalls for privacy.
- [Ayako] There was no privacy there so some of the ladies just bring cardboard or somethin' so they could be, you know, closed off.
- [Narrator] There was a loss of family structure and routine.
- My uncles at that time would be, you know, no longer eating with the family, they'd be off with friends, you know, in different sections of the camp and he camp was huge so, you know, they kinda lost track of each other a little bit, the family make up, you know, started breaking down.
- [Narrator] To show their loyalty, many Nisei men volunteered to fight for their country.
- [Ed] Somewhere along the line we realized that we had something to prove.
The families back in camp.
All of this business about, you know, being disloyal.
- [Narrator] In 1943, an all-Japanese-American, all-volunteer Army regiment, the 442nd, was formed.
Many of the soldiers volunteered from the incarceration camps.
- It would've been really hard for me if my mother and father were stuck in a tarpaper shack and we all lived together in one room that I could've volunteered.
- [Narrator] The loss of freedom, the loss of their home and property, the loss of privacy and dignity, the loss of their family structure all took a toll on the Japanese Americans.
Especially the older generation.
- My father was a bitter man to the end.
He was really bitter about the camp experience, about how they were treated, about the discrimination he faced after the war, yeah.
I don't think he ever got over it.