Les Ouchida was born an American just outside California’s capital city, but his citizenship mattered little after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States declared war. Based solely on their Japanese ancestry, the five-year-old and his family were taken from their home in 1942 and imprisoned far away in Arkansas.
They were among 120,000 Japanese Americans held at 10 internment camps during World War II, their only fault being “we had the wrong last names and wrong faces”, said Ouchida, now 82 and living a short drive from where he grew up and was taken from as a boy due to fear that Japanese Americans would side with Japan in the war.
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