They were expecting to move the entire Japanese in the exclusion zone of the United States to concentration camps.

You were going to be sent somewhere in the United States, but we didn't know where it was going to be.

We had our liberty, our freedom, our freedom of choice all taken away.

The night before we were to be going, Mama said tomorrow we're taking the ferry to Seattl and it'll be like a vacation.

We're going on vacation.

It didn't really dawn on us children what was going on in the world, until the day we had to pack up and leave.

This is a letter that my mom wrote.

I didn't want my children who were seven, four, two and nine months old to have bad feelings.

So, I told my oldest daughter that we were going on vacation.

From Bainbridge Island we were the first group to be taken to Manzanar.

When the Bainbridge Islanders were removed.

They were taken first by ferry, transferring to a train and then to a bus to Manzanar, which is east of the Sierra Mountains in desert country, Southern California.

The 227 Bainbridge Islanders started the camp, but over time 10,000 additional incarceratees were brought from the Los Angeles area.

There were many Assembly Centers constructed in the exclusion zone of the United States.

Now they were taken to racetracks and fairgrounds, where the Army, almost overnight had built Assembly Centers.

They lived here until New Pioneer communities could be completed on federally owned lands in the interior.

Just as "evacuation," "relocation" were deliberately deceptive terms used to politically frame and propagandize forced removal.

The name "Assembly Center," too was intended to soften and hide the fact that these were actually detention centers.

Thrown together holding pens on the way to the larger concentration camps.

Seattlites were temporarily held in places like the Puyallup Fairgrounds for many, many months.

This is a gunny sack that my father used to go to the prison camps, and that's our family number.

I was born while my parents were incarcerated in the prison camp on the Puyallup Fairgrounds.

My mom was pregnant when she arrived.

She went to the hospital, had me, and had to bring a brand new baby back to this horrible condition.

We weren't allowed to have cameras.

So, this drawing of me is my baby picture.

My own family was held at the Puyallup Assembly Center, which was euphemistically called "Camp Harmony."

There was nothing harmonious about it.

The conditions at these Assembly Centers were very unkind to people who had just been ripped from their homes.

Barracks were constructed with floorboards sitting on mud sills.

They were about 20ft wide with varying lengths, and had interior partial walls divided into little family compartments.

There were some people who were fortunate and actually had a room, but my family had to live in horse stalls.

In the barracks, the walls were just planks of wood nailed together like a fence.

There was one electric light bulb and one potbelly stove for heat.

Each room was equipped with a sack that you would take and fill with hay, and that would become your mattress.

And then we would just sleep on the floor.

At sites like Manzanar, the barrack rooms were 20 by 25.

So, if your family was one person, you got one room in a barrack.

If your family was seven people, you got the same size room.

Endless lines and trekking through mud and muck.

Poor sanitation.

They had to go to a separate building to go to the toilet.

I can't even begin to tell you the pictures.

I've seen of the toilet facilities.

The toilets were planks of wood with six holes drilled in them.

So you went to the bathroom side-to-side and back-to-back.

Life was hard.

The army provided housing and plenty of healthful, nourishing food for all.

When the Bainbridge Islanders arrived at Manzanar, they got army rations, which meant there were all of these canned foods.

No fresh vegetables.

If you were from Bainbridge Island.

You'd never seen anything but fresh vegetables from your farm before.

So the food was terrible and made people sick.

Actually, when they first arrived at Manzanar.

I had to take care of four children so I could not become sick.

Only for one day.

Sometimes the wind blows.

Oh, hard.

We couldn't even see the people walking beside us.

My oldest said, "What a vacation were having."

She made me cry.

One of the rules my mother made was I was not to wander far away from the barracks we were living in.

But one day I decided to explore and I walked a long distance away from our barracks.

I followed the barbed wire fence and all of a sudden I came to a creek.

I got so excited because this was the first green thing I'd seen since they got here.

The fresh bit of life in all this desert.

[DISTANT WHISTLE] He pointed his rifle at me and that scared me.

And I ran all the way back to my barracks.

And I didn't even tell my mama where I'd been, because I wasn't supposed to go that far away.

That's when I started to wonder.

What kind of vacation is this, anyway?

Now, this brief picture is actually the prologue to a story that is yet to be told.

It will be fully told only when circumstances permit the loyal American citizens once again to enjoy the freedom we in this country cherish.

And when the disloyal, we hope, have left this country For good.

We are protecting ourselves without violating the principles of Christian decency.

We won't change this fundamental decency, no matter what our enemies do.