Lesson 1: Education Inequalities in Japanese Incarceration Camps During WWII (U.S. National Park Service)

Black and white photo two young girls of Japanese ancestry smiling at the camera sitting on a box — Poston, Arizona. Little girls playing house at this War Relocation Authority center where evacuees of Japanese ancestry are residing. Left to right: Ayako Nakamura, 9 years; June Ibe, 6 years.
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. June 4, 1942. National Archives. NAID: 538552.

The Munemitsu family had four children; Seiko, who went by Tad, Saylo, Akiko “Aki”, and Kazuko “Kazi.” The children were “Nisei,” second-generation Japanese Americans who were American citizens. In 1942 they attended their local schools in Westminster, California. After Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. The Munemitsu children were forcibly relocated to Poston, Arizona.

This lesson is based on articles from Entangled Inequalities. Students will think about how Japanese Incarceration during World War II impacted children and education. It can be taught as part of a unit on World War II, Japanese Incarceration/Internment, or Civil Rights in the United States. It is the first in a series of three lessons about discrimination and education during World War II. You may teach it individually or as part of that series. You can find more lessons on Teaching with Historic Places.

Lesson Objectives:

Students will be able to…

Identify ways in which Japanese American students’ lives were disrupted and ways in which they tried to maintain normalcy.
Examine primary sources for perspective and context.
Evaluate whether Japanese American students were given equal opportunity for an education in the Incarceration Camps.

Essential Question:

How did World War II and Japanese Incarceration impact the education of Japanese Americans? Were their learning opportunities equal to students in the rest of the United States?

Warm Up: Picturing your Classroom

What are the things you think you need to have a successful time in school? Draw a picture of your own classroom and write a 1-2 sentence caption. What do you want to focus on? It can include materials and school supplies, people, or other parts of your environment. Are those things available in all school buildings or are they special to a particular classroom you have right now?

Black and white photo of construction site. blurry figures with wheelbarrows on left. Flagpole in background. — Poston, Arizona. These school buildings are being erected by evacuee labor. The structures will be of adobe which is made in the local evacuee operated adobe factory.
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, January 4, 1943. National Archives. NAID: 536622.

Background Reading:

For more information, visit Entangled Inequalities: “Questions of Labor and Loyalty: Japanese Incarceration and the Munemitsu Family.”

In 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. The order required all people of Japanese descent, including American citizens, living on the West Coast to be incarcerated at a series of camps. This included the Munemitsu family in Westminster, California. Families gathered the belongings they could carry and boarded government buses.

Some, like the Munemitsus, had neighbors they could trust to look after their land and property. The banker who helped the Munemitsus buy their farm, Frank Monroe, helped lease the land to a Mexican American family, the Mendezes, while they were away. Other families were not so lucky, and their homes and businesses were looted.

When people arrived at the camps, like Poston War Relocation Center where most of the Munemitsu family was sent, they found empty barracks. 18,000 people lived in three camps in Poston, Arizona on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. The schools weren’t finished. Part of the work in the first few months at Poston was to set up places to live and to set up the school. Everyone worked together to build the schools and other aspects of life.

School finally opened by October 1942 in Poston, enrolling 5,300 children from preschool to high school. Like in other camps, the buildings were overcrowded and there weren’t enough teachers. Average student-teacher ratios were 48:1 in the elementary schools. Some teachers were also of Japanese descent. Others were white teachers who lived in the camps. Some high school or college age students applied for passes to leave the incarceration camp and attend school elsewhere. US officials granted these passes as long as the students went east, away from the Pacific Coast. People also organized activities and clubs for both children and adults. Aki and Kazi attended third and fourth grade at the elementary school at Poston Camp 1.

In 1945, US officials released people at Poston and the other incarceration camps. When, and if, they returned to the West Coast, many had to start over. There was still anti-Japanese discrimination. The Munemitsus worked for and with the Mendez family, their tenants, as they adjusted to life back in California.

Vocabulary:

You can see the entire “Glossary of Terms related to Japanese American Confinement”
Issei: the first generation of immigrants from Japan, most of whom came to the U.S. between 1885 and 1924.
Nisei: second generation Japanese Americans, U.S. citizens by birth, born to Japanese immigrants (Issei).
Incarceration Camp: the sites where the US government forcibly relocated thousands of people of Japanese descent during World War II. Sometimes referred to as “internment camps,” those incarcerated, and their descendants prefer this term as more accurate because it does not make a judgement about a person’s wrongdoing
War Relocation Centers: the term used by the WRA to describe the facilities in which most Japanese Americans were held during World War II. The WRA administered ten such centers, most surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by military police. War relocation centers are also referred to as “incarceration camps,” “prison camps,” “internment camps,” and “concentration camps.”

Teacher’s Tip: Many of the resources below are from other Incarceration Camps, not just Poston. You may have students ask about the reliability of photographs or drawings from different camps. This is an opportunity to talk about the use of case studies or how historians make inferences based on the sources available, even if they are not the sources they would always like.

Activity 1: Picturing Incarceration

Using the following image and caption, have students discuss questions what school may have been like for Japanese American children in Incarceration Camps.

A pencil drawing of a room with two tables with scuff marks. There is a row of blackboards on the back wall. A door on the left is labeled “Do Not Use This Door.” Three other signs are posted in the room but are hard to read. — Picture drawn by Kenneth Iyeki, a student incarcerated in Tanforan in San Bruno California on September 4, 1942.
Kenneth Nobuji Iyeko. “Drawing of the inside of a classroom at Tanforan Assembly Center.” San Bruno, California: September 4, 1942. From the Kenneth Nobuji Iyeki Collection, courtesy of the Densho Digital Repository

Kenneth Iyeki wrote the following caption to the picture: “This is my wonderful history class (under the grandstand). The entire school was housed under one roof with no partition between classes. There would be so much noise that one day we, weather permitting, the teachers would [?] their classes out on the grandstand where there would be less noise. The wall partitions which appear as a blackboard one merely [?] which hide the openings which were [?] used as [?]. I can imagine all the money that passed from packet to packet in my history class. Sort of makes it hard for one to concentrate on what Aristotle did thousands of years ago.”

Picture Analysis Questions:

What do you see in the picture? What details tell you this is a classroom? What is unexpected or different about this classroom?
Based on the image and the caption, do you think that Japanese Americans were getting a fair education during World War II?
How does this picture compare to your drawing of your classroom? What does that tell you about similarities and differences between your school and schools in the Incarceration camps?
How does Kenneth’s, the artist, caption impact your understanding of what the classroom was like?
Who drew the picture? What do we know about the artist? How does that impact what he might have drawn?

Activity 2: Through the Government Lens

Look closely at the following photographs, then answer the questions below. These photographs were all taken by photographers working for the War Relocation Board, the federal government agency in charge of overseeing the evacuation of people of Japanese descent from their homes and running the Incarceration camps. The photographs were made to document “the daily life and treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II” (National Archives.)

*Teacher Tip: Students can look at the pictures and make observations before learning about who took them and why. This is an opportunity to talk with students about perspective. Push students to think about why the pictures below are different than the pencil drawing from the previous activity. Remind them it is not just the medium (photographs v. drawing) but the people who made them and why they were created that makes the sources different.

Lines of young students, alternating by gender, lean to their left with their arms outstretched. Stage with a piano and an empty chair are in the foreground. Room is otherwise bare. — Picture 1: View of second graders doing their rhythmic exercises inside grammar school auditorium. Jerome Relocation Center, Dermott, Arkansas.
Courtesy of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. National Archives. NAID: 537309.

Students of Japanese ancestry sit in a circle with books in their laps. On the left, one boy stands and seems to be reading from his book. Just right of center, a white woman sits in the circle and is reading her book. There is a pile of books, a few coat — Picture 2: Miss Velma Mullins, teacher, instructing a third grade class at Rohwer Relocation Center, McGehee, Arkansas. November 22, 1942.
Courtesy of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. National Archives. NAID: 538961.

Bottom left we see the back of a man with his hand resting on an open notebook on desk. In front of him, facing the camera are four rows of students of Japanese ancestry with piles of books on their laps. One young woman is raising her hand and smiling. — Picture 3: Mr. Kinji Sayama, teacher, and his eighth-grade science class at Rohwer Relocation Center, McGehee, Arkansas. November 25, 1942.
Courtesy of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. National Archives. NAID: 538956.

Picture Analysis Questions:

What do you see in the photos? What can you infer about what school was like in Japanese Incarceration Camps?
How do the photos compare to Kenneth Iyeko’s drawing of the classroom? What is similar and different? Why do you think that is?
How might the perspective and purpose of these photographs impact what is being depicted?
How does the different perspective from Kenneth’s drawing impact how you interpret each image?
What can you corroborate about education in the camps from multiple sources? What do you still want to know?

Activity 3: Letters from Incarceration Camps

Teacher Tip: The following are excerpts from letters specifically about education. You may want to direct students to the Japanese American National Museum’s Clara Breed Collection and let them explore the letters more freely to learn about daily life for children in Poston and other Japanese Incarceration Camps.

Teacher Tip: This activity can be completed as a jigsaw. Have students focus on one of the primary sources. Then have them discuss their analysis with students who read different documents.

Clara Breed was a librarian from San Diego, California. When many members of her community were relocated to incarceration camps hundreds of miles away, she encouraged the young people to keep in touch, sending them books and self-addressed envelopes with stamps. She received over 250 letters and postcards from Japanese American children during World War II. Letters to her give us a glimpse on what life was like for students at the time. Pick one of the letters and answer the questions below:

Letters to Miss Breed

Analysis Questions:

Who is writing? What do you know about the author of the letter?
Who are they writing to? [What is different about the reader and the author?]
What do you learn about school in the incarceration camp?
What about the intended reader might impact what is written? Do you think this is the complete story of what is happening at school?
Talk to students who read different letters. How do the letters corroborate what you learned about the schools from the images? What new information do they tell you?

Exit Activity:

Teacher Tip: You can collect this exit ticket in whichever way best suits your classroom. This may be a chance for students to share with each other, by posting to your classroom online forum or sticky notes on the wall to facilitate conversation next class. You can also have them submit, on an index card or a private online assignment, for you to check for understanding.

How would you characterize Japanese Americans’ school experience during World War II? How do you feel this experience fits with messages and promises of the United States generally and during the War specifically?

Additional Resources:

In addition to exploring the Entangled Inequalities site, you should check out the following resources.

Look through Kenneth Iyeki’s other drawings from his life during and after World War II in the Densho Digital Repository collection.

Read other letters from students to Clara Breed talking about their time in the Japanese incarceration camps.

Explore exhibits and primary sources, including “Don’t Fence Me In: Coming of Age in America’s Concentration Camps” at the Japanese American National Museum

This lesson was written by Alison Russell, an educator and consulting historian for the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded by the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

Lesson 1: Education Inequalities in Japanese Incarceration Camps During WWII

Lesson Objectives:

Essential Question:

Warm Up: Picturing your Classroom