This was for my civics class and it is a drawing of a Japanese immigrant working on one of the farms in the Japanese internment camps during WWII. (Read more about it down below) it looks much better irl T-T
The initial major surge of immigration from Japan was documented in the middle of the 1800s when Japanese workers came and started to work on farms in California and sugarcane fields in Hawaii. By 1900, over 24,300 Japanese immigrants were in the US, mainly concentrated on the West Coast, where almost two-thirds of them had a job in agriculture. As a result, Japanese-American farms in California grew nearly 40% of the state's vegetables. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Japanese Americans were only given 4–14 days to order their affairs before they were first brought to temporary assembly sites and then to one of the ten internment camps. In most cases, they had to sell their properties and pack as many possessions as they were able to carry to take with them to the internment camps, all within this timeframe. At the camp, the Japanese Americans had to live in uninsulated barracks that only had cots, a coal-burning stove, limited access to hot water, and a shared bathroom and laundry unit. Additionally, the camps were surrounded by barbed wire fences, armed guards, and watchtowers. However, despite all of this, they still tried to create a sense of community and a sense of normalcy by setting up schools, newspapers, churches, farms, and other activities such as sports. The incarceration camps were intentionally placed by the government in inhospitable places with agricultural potential to improve the area for post-war use. The largest of these farms was at the Tule Lake internment camp, which was located on a former lake bed with more than 1,000 Japanese Americans at Tule Lake working in its fields, most of them making about $12 per month—roughly 25% of what farmworkers were paid at that time. and it grew nearly thirty different crops, such as potatoes, daikon radishes, and rutabagas. In addition, they raised chickens and hogs, for which they grew hay and grain to make animal feed. The farms at Tule Lake were also essential due to the amount of food they produced, which was enough to provide food for everyone in the camp and have some left over to send to other camps. Due to how essential it was to keep up production, all men who were able to work but refused were threatened with a monthly fine of $20.
