02.18.08
Japanese internees’ hard work created lush valley
In 1942, the President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, where 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants were sent to 10 remote camps across the country after the Pearl Harbor attack Japanese were, for no good reason, considered a threat to this country.
Japanese-Americans were forcibly sent to Poston Relocation Center during Second World War. Internees began to arrive by train in May of 1942. The 3 1/2 years they spent at the camp are a shameful period in American history, but their work while imprisoned there continues to shape the land and the lives of the people there today. One of their biggest - and most difficult - tasks was the digging of irrigation ditches to bring water from the Colorado River to the fields. They were paid an average of $16 a month.
“American infrastructure was built by the government and Japanese labor.”