February 19, 2017 marked the 75th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s controversial executive order, which allowed the government to incarcerate Japanese Americans following the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor. From 1942 to 1946, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were forced to live in the harsh and demoralizing conditions of internment camps. Minoru Imamura, whose parents emigrated to California in 1926, spent his last two years of high school in a Colorado camp and afterwards was drafted into the U.S. Army. Imamura and his wife Mary were beneficiaries of a 1988 law signed by President Ronald Reagan that granted survivors $20,000 in reparations.

February 22, 2017 video and resource materials from PBS NewsHour.