Aware of the Nazi concentration camps, they believed their own project was “an ironic testimony to the value of American democracy.” Historian Mae Ngai writes, “The greater irony, however, is that WRA’s assimilationism led to the most disastrous and incendiary aspects of the internment experience—the loyalty questionnaire, segregation, and renunciation of [their Japanese] citizenship.” WRA workers treated adult Japanese as children, infantilizing them, with the same mindset that prevailed in the US government’s Indian boarding schools.88
