>> The following is a presentation of KBTC Profiles.

>> There's so many things in our history that are not told.

Over 125,000 people throughout the West Coast were incarcerated, two-thirds American citizens.

>> They turned the Puyallup Fairgrounds into the Puyallup Assembly Center.

>> These aren't just names.

They're someone's mother, brother, child.

These are human beings.

I hope that people will try to bring their stories into the taught history of our country.

>> Japanese immigration to the United States begins in significant numbers in the late 19th and early 20th century.

By 1907, native-born Americans were beginning to see Japanese immigration as a threat.

The 1930s was a time of aggressive Japanese imperialism throughout the Pacific.

So, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American public was already primed with this sort of anti-Japanese sentiment that had been brewing for decades.

Executive Order 9066 was issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1942.

The Western Defense Command issued a number of orders under the authority of Roosevelt's executive order, requiring all persons of Japanese ancestry to self-report to authorities.

By 1942, there are about 14,400 persons of Japanese ancestry living in Washington state, most of them in King County.

About half that number, 7,000, in Seattle.

Upon reporting, then, the internees were taken to Camp Harmony in Puyallup.

Seven thousand persons processed at that camp between April and August of 1942.

The instructions stated that they should bring clothing and bedding, toiletries, things like that, but it was limited to what they could carry on their person.

Barracks were hastily constructed all over the fairgrounds.

The entire camp is enclosed in barbed wire.

They're under constant guard and supervision.

There are nightly curfews.

Movements within the camp were severely restricted.

Japanese language reading materials could be confiscated.

It was a very dire existence.

>> They were orderly, and they seemed to be a harmonious people coming into Puyallup.

And the next thing you know is you have on the paper a picture of the Seattle Japanese entering Camp Harmony.

You know, no one told them it was the Puyallup Assembly Center.

The military and the government are not going to be opposed to an assembly center, a concentration camp, being nicknamed Camp Harmony.

>> I was about nine years old, maybe nine years and a half.

It was hot because it was June, July, August.

We were just not very knowledgeable about things going on because we had never -- we didn't have the money to go to the fairgrounds.

It was kind of exciting.

"We're here at the fairgrounds, oh, boy!"

But then we went to our place, and it turned out to be a horse stall.

They had straws in the horse stall, so my dad made beds for us.

And your bathroom, you had to walk ways down, and then wait for the bell.

You go -- you had to walk and hurry up and walk and go to the mess hall.

We didn't have nothing to do.

We didn't have any books or anything, because we couldn't bring anything with us.

It's the parents that I really don't think I really appreciated as much as I should have.

How did they manage taking care of the kids, doing the wash, taking us to the bathroom, making sure we got our food?

It must have been just horrendous, but they're very strong.

You do the best you can with what you get, and maybe that's how we survived.

>> In the 1940s, there were a number of Japanese American citizens who challenged the executive order, the curfews, the relocations, and so forth.

Korematsu, Hirabayashi, Yasui all went to the Supreme Court.

And the court, in those cases, ruled that the relocation, the internment was constitutional in the name of military necessity, national security.

Crises of this magnitude in this nation's history are often accompanied by, or even caused by the breakdown in institutions.

Rather than think of Japanese American internment as something that happened in the past and has no bearing on our lives today, I think we should consider it as a cautionary tale for how institutional breakdowns might result in injustices in the present and in the future.

>> You got to learn from the past and accept what wrongs you did, learn from your mistakes; otherwise, it's all wasted.

>> We are in the Remembrance Gallery, and this has been a dream for many, many years.

There's over 7,500 names on monument right now.

Our main thing was we wanted to be able to acknowledge and honor every single person who had been imprisoned in the largest concentration camp in the state of Washington.

>> We are under the grandstand, a very rustic surrounding, and we have tried to put something very beautiful in it.

>> This is our language.

This is through our filters.

This is everything from the Japanese American point of view.

It's authentic and, above all, it's respectful.

It's telling the truth of what was life like here in Puyallup.

When we build something like this, and we can make some connections with our young people, then I think their legacy will live on, and their story will live on, and it's a way for them to personalize history.

[ Music ] >> Funding for this edition of KBTC Profiles provided by the KBTC Association.

>> KBTC Profiles are available at kbtc.org.