Looking After Minidoka: An American Memoir In Nakadate’s “Looking After Minidoka: An American Memoir” we learn of the struggles that the Japanese American’s were faced with during World War II and shortly thereafter. Nakadate tells the story of his ancestors, with what starts off with the history behind the Japanese coming to America leads to the struggles the Japanese Americans were faced with in the United States following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Without knowing what was fully happening the Japanese were in turn following in the footsteps of the Chinese who had been recruited earlier by the Central Pacific Railroad. The same Chinese, who after completing the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, were declared invaders and blamed…show more content… General DeWitt had argued that evacuation and incarceration was necessary for national security. When the Japanese Americans asked for proof of acts of sabotage, DeWitt replied “that it was precisely the absence of any acts of sabotage that “proved” the Japanese were simply lying in wait for the right moment to commit them.” (Nakadate 74) Roosevelt’s acceptance of DeWitt’s opinions as if they were facts served to take focus away from the disaster at Pearl Harbor and push the blame onto the Japanese Americans. Shortly after there was a brief opportunity for Japanese Americans to voluntary resettle, for those who could make arrangements overnight, with the image of forced evacuation not far behind. Then with the onset of war and the Depression far from over, the scapegoat argument “that immigrants from Asia were responsible for many of the country’s economic woes was still current. For the get-rid-of-foreigners lobby, forcing Japanese Americans off of “American property” would certainly be a step in the right direction.” (Nakadate 77) The Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, which ironically “were placed on reservations American Indians had been “relocated” to, and that all of them were on land that had been taken from native tribes during previous century” (Nakadate 77). Now Japanese Americans were kicked off American land to be placed on Indian reservations, after the United States had once kicked the Indians off that same very