The Japanese in America during World War II

Although I cannot recall the name of my dentist when we lived in Denver (the first time – in the 1970s), there is  a brief conversation that has remained in my mind.  My dentist was of Japanese extraction,  born in America.   Thus he was a Japanese-American.  He was an American.   During World War II his parents were interned in a Japanese Detention Camp in Colorado.  He didn’t describe his parents’ experience in the camp and I can’t recall why the subject was raised – only that he mentioned it.

Ignorant as I was of these camps, I was astounded.  Why on earth were the Japanese, living in America, uprooted from their homes and professions and sent to fenced, guarded, camps in America?  Why?

Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese internment camps.

Jamie Ford’s novel “Hotel On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” recalls this era.

Read more about this book on Life in Seguin and Other Aimless Musings.