Overnight, Kiyo became an awkward teen in a country full of people who suddenly thought she might be The Enemy. "The only time you felt safe was when you were in your own home, and even then you felt like the FBI could be peeking in through your vines. And they would pop in at any time."
The FBI found themselves in charge of making sure people like Kiyo and her family -- who were farmers -- weren't somehow planning on bringing down democracy from within. "Three of them came into our house. ... They just barged in anywhere and ransacked the whole place." They were looking for radios and any other equipment that might've been used to signal the Japanese military.
It's important to recognize that, right alongside being Nazi-fighting badasses, the Greatest Generation panicked at the thought that a bunch of their fellow citizens might be sleeper agents. Of course, that's a fear we've outgrown by n-
Real Clear Politics
Oh, right.
On Jan. 14, 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- probably the one person most responsible for the U.S. not joining Germany, Spain, Romania, Hungary, and Italy in Fascism -- decided it'd be fine to throw every Japanese person in America into a camp. He signed Presidential Proclamation 2537, destining Kiyo and her family to a form of imprisonment.