Letters from the Japanese incarceration camp at Santa Anita

Pinoy Built March 22, 2023

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, there was an unfounded fear that Japanese Americans would be loyal to Japan.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to incarcerate Japanese Americans. The Santa Anita Race Track was designated one such camp, creating the Santa Anita Assembly Center.

Thousands of Japanese Americans were forced to live in barracks and horse stables. One man was Ted Fujioka. Ted was 17-years-old when he was forced into Santa Anita and wrote letters to a high school teacher. Decades later, those letters made it back to Ted’s nephew, Darrell Kunitomi, historian for the Los Angeles Times.

Here, Darrell reads a few of Ted’s letters and shares memories of his time at the camp and tells us why we cannot forget this time in American history.