Arturo Shibayama: Hostage in America

Arturo Shibayama and his family were living in Lima, Peru, until 1944. Shibayama was 11 years old when he became one of the thousands of Latin Americans of Japanese origin who were removed from their homes and placed in internment camps in the United States. Shibayama's grandparents were eventually sent to Japan — a country they hadn't visited — in exchange for American prisoners of war. Though Shibayama and his parents were released in 1946, Peru barred them from returning. Decades passed before the United States agreed to grant them citizenship. Though Japanese-Americans received reparations for being interned during World War II, Shibayama is one of thousands of Japanese Latin Americans awaiting an apology or acknowledgement of wrongdoing from the U.S. government.