Japanese Internment

Yes, I was taught about it in high school. I was in HS from 1989-1993… Manzanar is mentioned in Karate Kid and Snow Falling on Cedars, although a fictional place, is set near where I grew up (North end of Puget Sound). And other parts of the Western Washington area… Bellevue… has a sad and unsettling history in regards to these events.

This thread is interesting to me, because I wonder how geography plays a role in people’s exposure.

Small rural high school in Nebraska - definitely did not learn about it. I can't pinpoint exactly when I did learn about it. We visited Manzanar a few summers ago and they have turned it into an excellent NPS site - I was impressed with the exhibits and you can tell it was developed in more recent times as they did not shy away from the racism, etc.

I heard about them often from my mother. She grew up on a farm in the Central Valley of California, where there were many Japanese farmers. She told us about a Japanese friend who suddenly stopped attending their small high school. My mom tried to find her over the years and never could.

I don't remember learning about them in high school. Maybe I did, but it didn't grab my attention the way my mom's personal experience did.

I can't remember when I learned of it, but I always thought that WWII's beginning was about as far as we got in American History in High School--because by the time we covered all before 1940, the school year was over.

I was aware of some discrimination against those of Japanese heritage because a family lived in our area.
I am surprised they were not put in an internment camp, but my mother told me once how terrible the family was treated. I recall her saying that the "authorities" came and examined the home and took the family's radio away.

I'm so glad that you teach this!  Thank you!

I grew up in Canada and moved to Cali in the late 80s.  
I didn't know about this atrocity inflicted on Japanese Americans until many years after our move, when I read the novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  I've since learned a fair bit... a really ugly bit of our U.S. history. 

We had internment camps here in British Columbia, I’m not sure if I learned about it in school or later on in life. Just can’t remember where my tiny bit of knowledge about them came from.

I never learned about it in school. I had no idea we did that until maybe 10 years ago.

I learned about it growing up because the state fairgrounds near me was an internment camp.

My dad grew up during WW!! and has a lot of stories about the war from a child's perspective.

I learned about it in middle school and more in-depth discussion in high school. I grew up in the PNW not far from the Puyallup fair (now the WA State Fair) which was used as a relocation center. I also had friends who had grandparents who were in internment camps. 
My husband who grew up in Michigan has no memory of it being covered in his history classes.

I can't remember learning about it in school. Most of my schooling was in rural OK & AR and there were 2 camps in Arkansas so I'd think they'd merit some attention.

In high school in OK, at my school we took a full semester of OK history where we did not learn about the Tulsa massacre, so Japanese interment camps certainly weren't a part of the curriculum. I feel like we were taught that the US finally got involved after Pearl Harbor and we saved everyone as heroes, the end. The truth is a much bigger and layered picture.

My dad’s family rented their farm land, so they did not lose property, but they could only take with them what they could carry. They did lose their animals. My dad was young and he jokingly told me that he was happy that he no longer had to do farm chores and that he could play basketball all the time. He really didn’t understand, at that time, why they were sent there. The older population of course fully understood. When the Japanese nationals were finally allowed to become citizens in 1952, my grandfather was bitter and never became a citizen. I think the only thing that kept him in the US after the war was his family. His children, grandchildren, and now his wife, were all citizens. My dad’s oldest brother volunteered, and he was a translator in the Pacific during the war.

My mom’s family was in Hawaii, so their story is a lot different. The JA had been there since the late 1800’s and they were needed to work on the big plantations. I guess money overrode the fear of them being “traitors” so they were never rounded up. A couple of uncles volunteered. One fought with the 442nd in Europe. I have his pin, and I treasure it.

I don't know when I first learned about the US interment camps, but I didn't grow up, nor have I ever lived, in the US.
I have known all my life that there were camps in Australia, as that is how my dad's family first came to Australia, My nonno was put into a camp by the British in (what was then) Palestine, as he was an Italian who worked for a British map printing firm and was considered dangerous due to that. His wife (my nanna) and their three sons - including my dad - we also interned. They were later shipped out to the US, but their boat was attacked, so they were transferred to another ship that was en route to Sydney, so they ended up there. There were also camps where Japanese prisoners were kept in Australia.
One thing I didn't learn in school history classes was that Darwin, in Northern Australia, was bombed by the Japanese several times after 1942, and that Japanese submarines were found sunk in Sydney Harbour after the war.

I thiiiiink I learnt it in high school (in Norway). Whether it was part of the curriculum or something the teacher just mentioned, I have no idea.

I don't understand either. We are talking about a historical event. Why is that political?