Japanese American Food: Internment: Family and Foodways inside the Barbed Wire

At the beginning of World War II, issei on the West Coast found their exile doubled. On 19 February 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued executive order 9066, which eventually placed more than 120,000 West Coast Japanese (64 percent of whom were U.S. citizens) in internment camps in the western interior. Japanese residents in the territory of Hawaii were not interned because there were too many, but they did have to dissolve certain organizations. Taken from their homes, Japanese Americans had to make a home life in very restricted conditions, and often food became emblematic both of home and of deprivation. Kazuko Itoi said:

The menfolk loaded the truck with the last boxes of household goods. … [Our friend] held up a gallon can of soy sauce, puzzled. “Where does this go?” Mother finally spoke up guiltily, “Er, it’s going with me. I didn’t think we’d have shoyu where we’re going.” … “But mama, you’re not supposed to have more than one seabag and two suitcases. And of all things, you want to take with you—shoyu!” … But mother stood her ground. “Nonsense. No one will ever notice this little thing. It isn’t as if I were bringing liquor!” (Dublin, 1993, p. 255)