♪♪ ♪♪ (female narrator) Kazuko Sakai Nakao was 22 years old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.

(NAKAO) We were farm kids, we didn't know where Pearl Harbor was.

Where is that?

(Narrator) For decades, the Sakai family had farmed strawberries on Bainbridge Island.

After Pearl Harbor, that all changed.

Widespread fear and racism escalated against the Japanese American community.

My father said anything Japanese burn it, bury it.

Were we busy.

>>>Many thought the Japanese Americans posed a security threat to the country.

Most questioned their loyalty.

(STEVEN BINGO) One of the more quoted clips was, "a Jap is a Jap" which meant that, one's loyalty can be determined by blood rather than one's life experience.

So, because they had Japanese blood, they cannot be trusted to be loyal to the U.S. in the time of war.

>>>That winter, the FBI raided Bainbridge Island and other northwest communities, looking for contraband and arresting Japanese American leaders.

(CLARENCE MORIWAKI ) They hit all of the homes simultaneously and they came without search warrants, went through all the homes, took whatever they wanted (ROD TAMURA) The hysteria was happening fast.

You know, one day Pearl Harbor, and the next day they're talking about what are they going to do.

The men of the families were interrogated, taken from their homes, asked a lot of questions.

(DOUG SUGANO) My maternal grandfather was taken away to a Department of Justice camp and my family had no idea where he was, none.

So, they had no idea if he was going to be held for the duration of the war, or if he was going to be tortured or what.

>>>Japanese nationals were now considered enemy aliens.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9-0-6-6.

The order gave the military the authority for the mass removal and incarceration of all people of Japanese heritage living on the west coast, whether they were American Citizens or not.

Nearly 120,000 people were forced to leave their homes.

Most were women and children.

Two thirds were American citizens.

(AIKO MINATA) When the war broke out, that was one of the darkest times of our lives.

We had to go to the police station and have our fingerprints taken.

(KARA KONDO) I remember just doing things so my parents would not become very frightened.

And I would cry every night, after everybody was in bed and think, Oh, my gosh.

What's happening to us?

The Japanese Americans were given only six days to pack, sell or store their belongings.

They could only take what they could carry.

(LILI HIRATA) You could only take one little suitcase with you.

Only what you could carry.

(MORIWAKI) And during that time they had to register all the people in the community.

There was a curfew imposed so they could not be out after dark.

So they, they were making a lot of dramatic choices.

How to take care of their properties?

Who's going to look after it, if they had someone to look after it?

(SUGANO) There would be pawn brokers who would drive thru neighborhoods in their trucks and they would buy whole households of goods and furniture for pennies on the dollar.

(KONDO) You could hear them saying when are they going to leave?

I'll sure be glad when they get out of there.

And having to sit and listen to the people like that.

(MORIWAKI) People had signs that said "Japs go home, Japs not wanted".

And they put them on their store fronts and they wore them as buttons.

♪ >>>Bainbridge Island was the first place to evacuated.

(KAY KAZUKO) A special ferry came to pick us up, 227 of us.

They said take only what you could carry.

So we had our small suitcase and we put in whatever we could, and I must have had about three layers of clothes on or more.

I had a wool suit on, a wool overcoat.

>>>Under armed guards, the Japanese Americans were loaded onto trains.

No-one knew where they were going.

(JEANNE TANAKA) We can't open the blinds and then they transported us during the nighttime.

And we didn't know where we were going.

>>>The Japanese Americans were eventually moved to ten, newly built incarceration camps located in isolated inland areas.

Places like Minidoka, Idaho; Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and Manzanar and Tule Lake, California.

(AKIKO KUROSE) We saw this guard tower with a soldier pointing a gun towards us.

And it was very shocking.

(AIKO MINATA) It was an internment camp, but with barbed wires around the perimeter and armed guards.

It really was a prison.

>>>Each camp was like a small city with over 10,000 Japanese Americans living together in rows and rows of barracks.

There was a mess hall, a school, and hospital.

(FRED SHIASAKI) If you've seen pictures of those camps they were just a whole series of tar paper shacks.

The living conditions, in the winter time were just terrible and the summer was hot and dusty.

These camps were in places where people don't live ordinarily.

(AKIKO KUROSE) Small barrack, all six of us you know.

Bumper to bumper, No privacy and lots of extra time.

(NAKAO) We were prisoners in our own country.

So we didn't have any freedom.

We had fence all around, watch towers.

(JUN YUGAWA) It was a prison, in the literal sense.

We were held there without a trial.

We were held there against our will.

They had barbed wires.

There was prison guards.

If that's not a prison I don't know what the term is.