World War II Database

As a teenager in California, despite being a US citizen, Hidekazu Tamura faced wide spread racial discrimination that left him bitter. When news of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor reached his home town, he thought "I'll be killed at the hands of my fellow Americans." He spent the nearly entirety of the war in internment camps just for being of Japanese descent. At the end of the war, disillusioned and only able to see hypocrisy around him, he renounced his US citizenship and moved to Japan. When interviewed in 2020 about his feelings toward the US, he said "Almost 70, 80 years since I knew America then, the same thing, discrimination, (is happening) now... never improves, this problem."

For more information:
Associated Press: 75 years later, Japanese man recalls bitter internment in U.S
WW2DB: Internment of Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians