Sharon Caroll
Transcript: Japanese Internment with Sharon Carroll
Q: How well publicized was the internment?
"It was announced in the newspapers that they were moved inland. I think the reason was that they might attack us."
Q: How much did the public really know about internment?
"In 1941 I was only 12, but that doesn't mean we didn't know. Kids were more protected from things going on. By the Japanese attacking, this wave of hate swept the country. When we heard about internment we didn't think there was anything wrong with that because we thought they were all terrible."
Q: What was the general opinion on Japanese people at the time?
"There was so much propaganda. There was never a good person in those movies that came out. We were put into this mood that they were all terrible. It was just the idea that a lot of those people worked for people on the West coast and that they might be sympathetic."
Q: So people didn't really have a lot of knowledge; they were just scared?
"We thought they were all sympathetic with what Japan had done. There were reports that they had submarines and spies everywhere. We thought they would attack again at any time."
Q: I'm assuming there weren't a lot of Japanese people in Indianapolis .
"At that time things were pretty segregated. I never met an Oriental person. They really weren't in the interior."
Q: When did people really start to realize what they had done?
"Most people probably didn't realize that all Japanese people weren't spying on us until after the War. A lot of those anti-Japanese sentiments lingered until well after it was over."
Q: We also had enemies in Germany and Italy . Was there a lot of racism against those people, or was it mostly concentrated against the Japanese?
"For some reason people seemed to think that the Italians were sort of laughable. I didn't really know any German people.