Neil Nakadate's Looking After Minidoka

After the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States government was really feeling pressure to enter into the war and to do something about the attack. Throughout the country, there was much unrest as more and more people began to blame Japanese and Japanese Americans for the attack. Many Americans feared sabotage form Japanese Americans or another attack. The government no longer could ignore the tension, and Franklin D. Roosevelt knew he needed to take action. Curtis B. Munson and K.D. Ringle were commissioned to conduct interviews and make reports on the loyalties of Japanese Americans. Although both reports found that the threat of Japanese sabotage was highly unlikely, the government ignored the reports and instead used the façade …show more content…
He describes how his father fully embraced American life – he joins the boy scouts and attends a white church. He also became a doctor so that he could better serve his country and his fellow citizens. In the Uprooted exhibit, a named James Kazuo Tanaka shares his family’s story of their internment in the same camp, Minidoka. During the family’s time in the camp, his father began to work at the Twin Falls sugar beat camp. That December, the family was granted clearance by the FBI to join the War Relocation Authority’s seasonal leave program. (James Tanaka) This is yet another example of Japanese American Patriotism in spite of Executive order 9066. Those who chose to work for the sugar beat famers knew they were making contributions to the war effort, and continued to do so even though they were being incarcerated. Akira and Arthur Iwasaki, the brothers of Taka Mizote and Aya Fujii who were interviewed for uprooted, were not in the camp because they were fighting in the war. (Uprooted, Mizote, Fujii) Why then did Roosevelt enact this order? How could the fear of a possible attack out way the shown and proven patriotism of so many Japanese