Behind the Wire Fence

Eleven-year-old William “Bill” Hiroshi Shishima was in prison. 

He was watched by soldiers with guns. He lived behind a fence made of sharp barbed wire. Beyond the wire stretched thousands of acres of harsh wilderness. Trying to escape would be pointless.  

Bill couldn’t believe how quickly his life had changed. Only three months earlier, he had been enjoying tacos with his friends, playing baseball after school, and spending his extra pennies on the latest comic books.  

But the president of the United States decided that Bill’s family and about 120,000 other Americans were a threat to the country. They were forced to leave their homes and sent to live in faraway prisons called internment camps. 

They had broken no laws. They had done nothing wrong.

This happened simply because they were Japanese American.

Bill was born in 1930 in Los Angeles, California. His parents were immigrants from Japan. They owned a grocery store. By 1941, the family’s business was doing so well that it had grown to include a small hotel. But trouble was on the way. 

A terrible war was raging across the world. It became known as World War II. Germany had invaded many countries in Europe. Japan had taken over parts of China and was preparing to attack other Asian countries. 

Americans were determined to stay out of this war. 

And then America was attacked.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed the U.S. military base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 

Bombs rained from the sky. Torpedoes shot through the water. More than 20 American ships were badly damaged or destroyed, along with hundreds of planes at nearby air force bases. More than 2,300 Americans were killed and another 1,200 wounded. 

Eleven-year-old Bill was walking out of a movie theater when he learned about the attack. Like most Americans, he felt horrified, angry, and afraid. 

The next day, the U.S. declared war on Japan and entered World War II. The attack on Pearl Harbor would change American history. What Bill couldn’t imagine was how it would change everything for him and his family. 

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were about 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the United States. Most lived on the West Coast.

Bill and his family, like most Japanese Americans, thought of themselves as Americans. Bill’s parents had left Japan before Bill was born. They’d worked hard to create a happy life in their new country. Bill had spent his whole life in California. He was an American citizen. He had almost no connection to Japan. 

But suddenly, Japanese Americans were viewed with suspicion and fear. 

Were some Japanese Americans secretly working as spies for Japan? Did they really want Japan to win the war? Were they helping plot another attack on America? 

Poisonous rumors swirled, and it didn’t matter that there was no evidence to support any of them. Prejudice against Japanese Americans exploded into panic and hatred. They couldn’t be trusted, many insisted. Something had to be done to protect America.

In February 1942, two and a half months after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an order. It gave the military the power to remove all Japanese Americans—every man, woman, and child—from America’s West Coast. They would be taken to prison camps in far-off parts of the country.

By spring, signs had appeared in Bill’s neighborhood. They ordered all people of Japanese descent to report to a local church by noon on May 9. They were to bring bedding, clothes, utensils, and other personal items, but no more than they could carry. The signs did not say where they would be going or how long they would be gone. 

Bill’s family scrambled to sell their belongings. They gave up their store and hotel. They tried to sell the family truck, but no one would buy it. They had to give it away for free. 

At the church, Bill and his family joined dozens of others. Many wore their best clothes—mothers in floral dresses, fathers in suits. Small children clutched their mothers’ hands, wearing their finest coats—and frightened expressions. 

Eventually, everyone was loaded onto buses and taken to the Santa Anita racetrack. The racetrack was one of 16 temporary shelters. Bill and his family would be held there while prisons were built. 

Conditions at the racetrack were horrible—crowded, smelly, dusty. Sometimes Bill would stare longingly at the movie theater across the street. Only days earlier, he could see a movie whenever he wanted. Now the theater might as well have been on the moon.

In August 1942, after three months at the racetrack, Bill and his family were put on a train. They were headed to Wyoming. 

Nothing could prepare Bill for what greeted him at the end of his journey. 

Stepping off the train, he gazed upon a lonely wilderness surrounded by towering snow-capped mountains. In the middle of this harsh land was a large camp. It was called the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. 

The camp was guarded by armed soldiers, and would later be surrounded by barbed wire. It was made up of row upon row of rustic buildings. Soon, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned here. 

Bill, his parents, and his three siblings crowded into a tiny room with hardly any furniture. (After his mother had a baby, they got a second room.) The thin walls barely kept out the frigid Wyoming winds and snows. That first winter, Bill became dangerously ill with pneumonia [nuh-MOHN-yuh].

During World War II, there were 10 camps like Heart Mountain. All were built in remote areas for the purpose of separating Japanese Americans from the rest of the country. 

Life in these camps was extremely difficult. Buildings were cramped and poorly built. Dust and dirt crept in. And there were daily embarrassments that still make Bill cringe. He hated bathing in the one-room shower with seven other people. The toilets were even worse. There were no doors or walls. Bill had to do his business in front of everyone.   

Still, many tried to make the best of their imprisonment. They had lost their freedom, their jobs, and their homes. Yet they held on to their honor and pride. They did their best to make their barracks as pretty as possible; mothers stitched curtains to bring color to dreary windows, and fathers built furniture from scraps of wood. Children attended camp schools and formed baseball teams.

World War II ended in 1945 with the defeat of Japan and Germany. Celebrations spilled into the streets all across America. At Heart Mountain, Bill felt relief. His first thought was that he would finally get to see the friends he’d been forced to leave behind. 

Eventually, all 10 camps were closed.  Everyone was allowed to leave. But where would they go? Many had lost everything—and not only their homes and businesses. Their sense of safety and fairness had been shattered by what the government had done to them. 

Bill and his family returned to Los Angeles to start over. After high school, Bill attended the University of Southern California, where his father had gone to college. He went on to become a teacher.

Nearly 40 years after the camps closed, Congress launched an investigation. In the final report, Congress decided that the internment of Japanese Americans had been a terrible wrong. 

The report led to an official apology from President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Survivors of the camps were each given a $20,000 payment. Bill donated his $20,000 to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where he now leads tours. 

Today, Bill is in his eighties. He feels a special responsibility to tell the story of what happened during World War II. 

“Everyone in America should know what happened to us . . . so it never happens again,” he says.