What exactely happened at the American inter camps during WWII?

How bad were they? what did they do to people? could they be consider as bad as the concentration camps in europe?What exactely happened at the American inter camps during WWII?I don't consider them as horrible as the Nazi Concentration Camps, but the Japanese internment camps are also proof of injustice.

Over one hundred thousand men, women and children were imprisoned in these relocation centers with approximately seventy thousand of them citizens of the United States. “They were imprisoned without indictment or the proffer of charges pending inquiry into their ‘loyalty.’ They were taken into custody as a military measure on the grounds that espionage and sabotage were especially to be feared from persons of Japanese blood. They were removed from the West Coast area because the military thought it would take too long to conduct individual loyalty investigations on the ground. They were arrested in an area where the courts were open, and freely functioning. They were held under prison conditions in uncomfortable camps, far from their homes, and for lengthy periods—several years in many cases. If found ‘disloyal’ in administrative proceedings they were confined indefinitely, although no statute makes ‘disloyal’ a crime.”

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/uni…



Some were also made to work as agricultural laborers with no wages, and worst of all, when the Japanese returned home to find that their properties had been taken over and the lives that they had built were gone.



In 1983, the CWRIC issued its findings in Personal Justice Denied, concluding that the incarceration of Japanese Americans had not been justified by military necessity. Rather, the report determined that the decision to incarcerate was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." Lastly, the Commission recommended legislative remedies consisting of an official Government apology; redress payments of $20,000 to each of the survivors; and a public education fund to help ensure that this would not happen again (Public Law 100-383).



On August 10, 1988, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, based on the CWRIC recommendations, was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. On November 21, 1989, George H.W. Bush signed an appropriation bill authorizing payments to be paid out between 1990 and 1998. In 1990, surviving internees began to receive individual redress payments and a letter of apology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_O…

However, many of the Japanese had already died by this time and had never received compensation.What exactely happened at the American inter camps during WWII?They were not as bad as the concentration camps in Europe - they did not torture or kill people, experiment on people, or starve them.



But we forced law-abiding people to pack up, abandon their homes, their jobs, their educations, their lives, simply because of their race. That is bad enough.



We housed them in overcrowded, inadequately heated barracks, and fed them cheaply. They experienced incredibly hardship and loss.What exactely happened at the American inter camps during WWII?Sure History will state that these inter camps in United States were not that bad, but that is only because the victors write History. One thing is for sure, the majority of the Japanese were discriminated against for the actions of its empire.What exactely happened at the American inter camps during WWII?
I remember hearing my friend's parents talk about how the Government came, forced them to leave their home in Groton CT, and sent them to an inter camp in California. The Father was a engineer specializing in submarines. The family was also second generation Citizens of the United States. Both his company and himself argued his knowledge was essential to the war, he was Chinese, not Japanese, but it did not make any difference. This family lost everything. The parents were still bitter about their treatment and no compensation for their loss 30 years later.