As I drive past the Arizona Memorial nearly every day, it is not easily forgotten. December 7th shall always be knowns as the "day of infamy" in these parts.

It would also be a disservice to forget or fail to remember the other events which followed America's awakening that war had been brought to its "doorstep."



In the wake of the horrendous attack, the United States government and its citizens wrongly imprisoned its own citizens purely on the cries of "national security" as a thinly veiled cover for racism, ignorance and hatred. Homes, business, personal property and lives were taken away from citizens who were Japanese in ancestry. The shrine in the picture above is in Bishop California, the site of the Manzanar Internment Camp.

Despite this, Japanese Americans voluntarily formed the 100th Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and served in the intelligence units in the Pacific. Imagine, they were serving their country while their parents, wives, and siblings were locked up in internment camps in the deserts of the western states.