Japanese Prisoners of War in America

Abstract

FEW AMERICANS today recall that the nation maintained 425,000 enemy during the Second World War in prisoner-of-war camps from New York to California. The majority of these captives were Germans, followed by Italians and Japanese. The incarceration of the 5,424 Japanese soldiers and sailors in the United States,' most captured involuntarily during the bloody battles of the South Pacific, tested the formidable ingenuity of the War Department. The very first prisoner of war captured by American forces was Japanese. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, the commander of a Japanese midget submarine which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, abandoned his damaged craft and swam for shore. As he crawled up onto Waimanalo