The Communities of the Incarcerated

Downtown Los Angeles' Little Tokyo has a bustling Japanese community.There are Buddhist temples, Japanese restaurants, and small Japanese-owned businesses.Japanese folks in Los Angeles have found a home there for decades.However, beneath this community lies hidden turbulence.People are angry, and they have been angry for decades.Only two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Executive Order 9066 was issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; people of Japanese descent were to be removed from the West Coast for the "safety" of the nation.Japanese American families across the West Coast immediately felt the repercussions.They were forcibly uprooted from their homes and transported to concentration camps.Many families were separated from each other in the process.The pain that Japanese Americans endured in their time before, during, and after the camps has weaved its way through the decades, negatively influencing communities along the way.It has damaged Japanese American identities, culture, traditions, economics, and even their health.Overall, the Japanese incarceration has had lasting negative effects on Japanese American communities ever since WWII ended.