Manzanar Children's Village

[4] About two-thirds of the orphans who would reside in Children's Village during the war came from these three homes, and several Shonien, Maryknoll and Salvation Army staff members would serve as their caretakers in camp.

Following Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI carried out large-scale arrests of Japanese Americans suspected of fifth column activity, mainly Issei community leaders and business owners (including Shonien director Rokuichi Kusumoto[6]).

[3] Nineteen of these 101 orphans were of mixed-race heritage,[3] some with as little as one-eighth Japanese ancestry,[9] including several children who were unaware of their racial background until army authorities identified them by scouring confidential orphanage and federal records.

[9][11] Col. Karl R. Bendetsen, "determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must all go to camp,"[5][12] gave the order to begin removing children from orphanages on April 28, 1942.

[3] Over the next few months, approximately thirty more children from Washington, Oregon and Alaska, mostly orphans who had been living with non-Japanese foster families, would arrive in Manzanar.

[8][14] This isolation, and the fact that many orphans came to Manzanar together and had known each other and their staff guardians for years, made the closure of Children's Village at the end of the war especially difficult.

In late 1944, Roosevelt issued Public Proclamation 21, allowing Japanese Americans to return to the West Coast starting in January 1945, and most of the WRA-run concentration camps closed over the course of that year.

Some, whose records had been lost during their removal or did not have an appointed guardian, remained in Children's Village while authorities attempted to find relatives or at least determine the child's legal residence.

[9][16] Manzanar Children's Village is no longer standing, but there is a National Park Service-operated informational slide about the orphanage at its former site, and the Children's Village Oral History Project, archived at the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University, Fullerton, contains interviews with former residents and staff members.

Lisa Nobe, "The Children's Village at Manzanar: The World War II Eviction and Detention of Japanese American Orphans."