Japanese Americans in Internment Camps

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor stunned the United States on December 7th, 1941. The frightened citizens of America started to spread false rumors about the Japanese, for instances poisoning vegetables and sabotaging the mining coastal harbors. In response, the US War Department wanted to evacuate the Japanese-Americans from Hawaii in 1942. This however did not occur because the Japanese were 37% of the population in Hawaii. Finally the leader of Hawaii gave in and agreed to send 1,444 (1% of Hawaii's population) Japanese Americans to internment camps. In the contiguous United States, there was much anti-Japanese American sentiment that was published in the newspapers. On February 19th, 1942, FDR signed a bill agreeing to remove all the people with Japanese ancestry and put them in internment camps. The US army rounded up 110,000 Japanese Americans and sent them to these prison camps. No charges were ever filed against these individuals. After WWII, Ronald Reagan signed a bill promising $20,000 to each Japanese American sent to the relocation camps.