EXHIBITS
Convicting the Innocent: Japanese American Youth at Topaz: Pearl Harbor and Japanese American Youth
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Pearl Harbor and Japanese American Youth

Kay Uno remembers Pearl Harbor, an oral history.
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(Courtesy of G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
“I was nine at the time of Pearl Harbor, and I was in third grade. That Sunday we were on our way home from church and we had the radio on in the car. Everybody was excited. We said, ‘Oh, those Japs, what are they doing that for?’ We didn’t think of ourselves as Japs.” —Kay Uno, A Fence Away from Freedom[1]

“Little Citizen’s Speak” from All Aboard, Spring 1944. This article was written by a class of seventh-grade Topaz High students in 1943 and covers the students’ experiences from Pearl Harbor to Topaz.
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(Courtesy of the Topaz Museum)
After Pearl Harbor, many Japanese American youth recalled being bullied or ignored at schools on the West Coast. One seventh-grade student at Topaz recalled in 1943:
“When we reached our school the boys and girls who were not Japanese called us names and stared at us but we were glad of the teacher because they were very kind to us and the teacher told the boys and girls who called us names not to call us names but be friendly like other times when we used to play together and have lots of fun. When recess came the boys and girls were quiet but still they were staring at us and they started to giggle over nothing at all and some of the boys started to laugh and start whispering so we felt very funny then. When the school was over we just ranned [sic] home because the boys and girls was [sic] talking about us.”[2]
