Imagine being told you have two days to pack up all of your belongings. Imagine being told that you could take no more than two bags of personal belongings. Imagine being told that because of your eyes and the color of your skin you were the enemy. This is what happened to 120,000 Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Their imprisonment lasted up to four years and was a great injustice. Japanese Americans were put into internment camps because of prejudice and paranoia which resulted in great loss, and the apology for this unjust act took fifty years.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government issued Executive order 9066 forcing all Americans of Japanese descent living in California, Oregon, and Washington to report to holding facilities away from the coast and to eventually be put into camps. This was supposed to be done to protect American citizens against sabotage from Japanese Americans. This was not really an issue as the government had evidence that not one single Japanese American ever acted as a spy for Japan. The real reason for the imprisonment of innocent citizens was, according to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, "motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

Without a doubt, this unjust imprisonment of Japanese Americans caused great loss to families. Families were forced to evacuate and leave everything they had behind—jobs, belongings, businesses. In some cases, families were even broken up and family members were sent to different camps. Many lost their lives in camps. Several were killed by guards for refusing to follow orders. Many more died in the camps due to poor medical care and emotional stress. Even if internees lived through the camps, health studies “Have shown a 2 times greater incidence of heart disease and premature death among former internees, compared to non-interned Japanese Americans.”

Although the Japanese American citizens had been wrongly imprisoned and had their lives damaged by the experience, it took the United States government nearly 50 years before it tried to make things right. Because of the efforts made by the Japanese American Citizens league, which was founded in 1929, President Jimmy Carter created a committee to study the internment. This committee was formed in 1980 and was given the task of finding out if anything should be done to repay those who were interned. More than 750 people spoke out at the hearings. One of the Nisei (American born of Japanese immigrants) said it was one of the “toughest experiences I’ve ever had—hearing one person after another talk about how hard it was.” These testimonials ended up making a difference and on August 10, 1988 President Reagan gave the Japanese Americans a formal apology and $20,000 checks to those who were interned.

In conclusion, even though these citizens of our country were treated unfairly and forever changed by their internment, an effort was eventually made to say sorry. If people of today keep this incident in mind, maybe it can be just a part of our history and never again a part of our future, and no one will have to imagine living through what our Japanese American citizens experienced.