Falling in love: Courtship in a Japanese American internment camp

March 7, 2013 • Cedric Yeh

During the opening months of World War II, almost 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them citizens of the United States, were forced out of their homes and into detention camps established by the U.S. government. Many would spend the next three years living under armed guard, behind barbed wire. Life did continue behind the barbed wire. Though residents had been deprived of their most basic rights, Japanese Americans lived as normally as possible. Internees produced a wide variety of arts …