that he can have the boundaries of the restricted areas fixed by the 9th. It is not until the 21st that he sends out his first list of names to Washington to be reviewed. Arizona followed on the 24th, with Oregon and Washington on the 31st. 4 February, 1942 – The federal government’s Office of Facts and Figures conducts a survey on the public opinion of the internment of the Japanese. Outlook for the Japanese was not good. In another, similar survey, the National Opinion Research Center found that 93% “approved of the relocation of Japanese aliens, and 60% favored the evacuation of U.S. citizens as well.” Additional polls showed that 50% of those surveyed wished “to send all Japanese Americans back to Japan after the war.”19 February, 1942 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, which allowed the U.S. Military to remove all individuals of Japanese ancestry from the west coast and move them into concentration camps in desolate areas in the interior of the country. Here, it was said, there would be no chance of communication between Japanese in America and those in Japan.The days that followed were horrendous – proclamations were posted everywhere, ordering the people to move out of their homes and bring only what they could carry. They were herded onto trains at gunpoint and taken to temporary detention compounds – usually old fairgrounds and racetracks – until they were taken to their new homes. These lush new homes were furnished (with a cot) and the people were even fed three (meager) meals a day. The internees had to work, building materials to help the soldiers defend a country that put them into prisons without just cause. The country that told them that they could get out of the camps if they were willing to die for their country.Which brings me to an amazing story. 85 young men at the camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, were drafted out...
