On the morning of December 7, 1941, thousands awoke to news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
A quiet fell over many Japanese Americans communities processing the weight of the event.
Hisaji Sakai, a high school junior at the time, recalled the moments after he heard the news:
Anti-Japanese sentiment rose across the United States in the weeks following the attack, leading to the implementation of Executive Order 9066 by President Roosevelt in February 1942.
This order authorized the incarceration and mass removal of Japanese Americans within the federally defined exclusion zone, spanning much of the West Coast.