Get a Job
You decide to get a job. Most of the people incarcerated at the camps were required to perform some form of work, ranging from digging irrigation canals and ditches, agriculture and farming, making military netting and rubber, and making clothes and furniture for the camp. They also served as mess hall workers, doctors, nurses, firefighters and teachers.
Those who worked made a fraction of what their white counterparts made outside of camp. You and your fellow internees decide to pool your earnings to establish a consumer cooperative and open a general store.
Want to Learn More?
Listen to Stephanie Hinnershitz, author of Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor During World War II, here.
