Everyday Life

About the Images

With thousands of residents, the internment camps inevitably became communities where families carried on with the details of daily life: adults worked, children went to school. This topic illustrates much of the daily life of internees, including camp administration, sleeping/eating/personal care, work, social life, study, events, relocation, and resettlement. The images show daily life as the government portrayed it in "publicity" photographs taken by government photographers, and through the art and camera lenses of the internees who lived it.

Overview

Because of the numbers involved — the Tanforan Assembly Center housed 8,000 people, for example — efficient administration was crucial. Several photographs show the government bureaucracy in action. A toddler is given a medical exam on entry; and Japanese American nurses are shown working in a clinic at Tanforan. Another photograph shows the housing office, where workers administered the day-to-day operation of the camps. A list of rules gives some idea of the restrictions placed on personal freedoms at the camps.

Two photographs show the interior spaces of barracks looking cramped and small. In one, cloth partitions are used to create private spaces, because entire families occupied one room. In the other, a man rests on a cot beneath his clothing, which hangs on a rope above his head. According to the caption, the government only supplied the cot and mattress. Three other WRA photographs show people living in exceptionally neat rooms, spacious by comparison. These are in stark contrast to Estelle Ishigo's brown-toned painting of a family around a table, At Home at Heart Mountain.

Meals were served cafeteria style. Two photographs show internees lining up for meals in the mess hall. According to one caption, they had to carry their own utensils and wash their own dishes back in their barracks. (Although these images show family groups eating together, historians and social scientists note that overall, family members tended to eat separately, weakening family ties.) Another photograph shows that evacuees worked preparing food for one camp in Arkansas.

Internee Henry Sugimoto's painting No Second Service shows a family eating in the mess hall. Signs on the wall warn "No second serving!" and "Milk for children and sick people only!" In his diary, Sugimoto commented, "They knew that the Japanese really liked rice, so rice was always part of the menu at least once a day. However, there were times when the rest of the meal didn't really go with rice. At times, there would be food that just wasn't appetizing at all, so you had to either try to eat at least one bite or just go without the meal."

With so many people, privacy was an issue. Bathing presented problems, as shown in Ishigo's painting No privacy for women and children, and her drawing The men had no bath tub so the[y] made one. Tak Sugiyama's photograph shows a man bathing in one of the home-made tubs, a sawed-off pickle barrel.

Adults worked in the camps. In addition to administrative jobs (such as nurses, office workers, and food service), internees also worked in the fields. Many of them, according to WRA captions, had also worked on farms before the war. The man shown feeding turkeys had owned and operated a turkey farm in Marysville for 26 years before internment. Another photograph shows the staff of the Pomona Center News, a camp newspaper (artist Estelle Ishigo is pictured second from right in the front row). Some adults, judged "loyal" by the US government, were released to work outside the camps due to wartime labor needs. A photograph taken at Granada Center shows residents registering at long tables.

Despite internment, daily life for children still consisted largely of school and play. Photographs show boys playing marbles, a girl on a swing, and children enjoying softball and basketball. A group of children walks through the muddy street to school during a rainstorm. High school in camp had many of the attributes of high school in peacetime. Images show a school band practice, a dance in the gym, and art classes. Other students just enjoy hanging out together on the campus. Several captions emphasize that internees served as teachers, and even earned teaching credentials in camp.

The small and large events of daily life also continued for adults. These photographs show women in a beauty salon, and a group of people forming a YMCA branch at camp. Inevitably, people died during internment. During the three years of its existence, the camp in Amache, Colorado, recorded 412 births and 107 deaths.

Some camps experienced resistance from internees. The photograph of a large number of people attending the funeral of James Wakasa in Topaz, Utah, is one example. Wakasa was shot and killed by a military sentry who claimed he was trying to escape. Residents demanded an investigation and a funeral outdoors, on the spot where he was killed. When their demands were refused, they stopped work in protest. Even after the funeral was allowed, the work stoppage continued. Eventually, the sentry was court-martialed and found not guilty. To prevent more protests, the government censored this from being reported in the camp newspaper.

When the war ended, the bureaucracy continued as interned citizens were released and resettled. The government hoped to disperse Japanese Americans throughout the country to prevent the emergence of Japanese ethnic enclaves. Scenes of assembly were now reversed. "Moving day at the Jerome Center" shows belongings being removed from barracks and loaded onto trucks. Another photo shows crowds waving goodbye as former camp residents board a train leaving the camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and heading to postwar life.