School Behind Barbed Wire: Education in Japanese American Incarceration Camps

The Munemitsu family of Westminster, California, had four children: Seiko, who went by Tad; Saylo; Akiko, called Aki; and Kazuko, called Kazi. They were Nisei — second-generation Japanese Americans, U.S. citizens by birth — and went to their local schools. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, requiring all people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast, citizens included, to be removed to camps. The Munemitsu children were sent to Poston, Arizona. Their story, part of a National Park Service lesson series on education inequalities in World War II, shows what school was like for children behind barbed wire.

Poston, Arizona, June 4, 1942: Ayako Nakamura, 9, and June Ibe, 6, playing house. War Relocation Authority photograph, National Archives.

Leaving home

Families packed what they could carry and boarded government buses. Some, like the Munemitsus, had neighbors they could trust with their land. Frank Monroe, the banker who had helped them buy their farm, arranged to lease it to a Mexican American family, the Mendezes, while they were gone. Other families were less fortunate, and their homes and businesses were looted.

Building a school in the desert

At Poston, 18,000 people lived in three camps on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. New arrivals found empty barracks and unfinished schools, and much of the work in the first months went into building places to live and to learn.

Schools finally opened by October 1942, enrolling 5,300 children from preschool through high school. As in other camps, buildings were overcrowded and teachers scarce: elementary classes averaged 48 students per teacher. Some teachers were of Japanese descent; others were white teachers who lived in the camps. Older students could apply for passes to attend school or college elsewhere, which officials granted as long as they went east, away from the Pacific Coast. Residents also organized clubs and activities for children and adults. Aki and Kazi attended third and fourth grade at the elementary school in Poston Camp 1.

What the sources show

The lesson asks students to compare three kinds of evidence, each with its own point of view.

• A student's drawing. Kenneth Iyeki drew his history class in a school where every class met under one roof beneath a grandstand, with no partitions. In his caption he described the din, teachers taking classes out onto the grandstand when the weather allowed, and how hard it was to concentrate on Aristotle.
• Government photographs. Photographers for the War Relocation Authority, the federal agency that ran the camps, documented daily life. Their pictures show second graders doing rhythmic exercises in an auditorium at the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas, and a third-grade class taught by Velma Mullins and an eighth-grade science class taught by Kinji Sayama at Rohwer Relocation Center, also in Arkansas. Who took a picture, and why, shapes what it shows.
• Letters. Clara Breed, a San Diego librarian, kept in touch with young people from her community after they were sent away, mailing them books and stamped, self-addressed envelopes. She received more than 250 letters and postcards. In one, Jack Watanabe thanked her for books, described Poston as a strange place barely on the map, noted the many white teachers and that school had just started, and told of a violent thunderstorm. Louise Ogawa described being driven in a cattle truck past a military police post, where the students were counted like livestock, to pick cotton to raise money for a school newspaper — and said she enjoyed it despite coming home exhausted. Yukio Tsumagari, writing from the Santa Anita Assembly Center, described its districts, mess halls and hospital, busy recreation and education departments, voluntary classes for children and adults, and a library of donated books — but also growing discontent.

Picture 3: Mr. Kinji Sayama, teacher, and his eighth-grade science class at Rohwer Relocation Center, McGehee, Arkansas. November 25, 1942. Courtesy of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. National Archives. NAID: 538956.

Picture 2: Miss Velma Mullins, teacher, instructing a third grade class at Rohwer Relocation Center, McGehee, Arkansas. November 22, 1942. Courtesy of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. National Archives. NAID: 538961.

Picture 1: View of second graders doing their rhythmic exercises inside grammar school auditorium. Jerome Relocation Center, Dermott, Arkansas. Courtesy of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority. National Archives. NAID: 537309.

After the camps

In 1945, officials released the people held at Poston and the other camps. Many who returned to the West Coast had to start over and still faced anti-Japanese discrimination. The Munemitsus worked for and with the Mendez family, their tenants, as they rebuilt their lives in California.

Poston, Arizona. These school buildings are being erected by evacuee labor. The structures will be of adobe which is made in the local evacuee operated adobe factory. Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, January 4, 1943. National Archives. NAID: 536622.

A note on words

Issei were the first generation of immigrants from Japan, most of whom arrived between 1885 and 1924. The War Relocation Authority called its ten main facilities "war relocation centers," most of them surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by military police; they are also called incarceration camps, prison camps, internment camps and concentration camps. Many who were held there, and their descendants, prefer "incarceration camp" because "internment" implies a judgment of wrongdoing.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Lesson 1: Education Inequalities in Japanese Incarceration Camps During WWII," from the series Education Inequalities in World War II: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lesson-1-education-inequalities-in-japanese-incarceration-camps-during-wwii.htm
• The children's letters and caption are paraphrased here. The source gives two different years for Executive Order 9066; this page does not state one. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.