Ralph Carr had neither expected, nor wanted, to be governor. Carr was at the midpoint of his second term as governor when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Public sentiment and the popular press overwhelmingly supported the incarceration of Japanese Americans. On February 18, 1942, for example, one Colorado newspaper editor…

This paper presents an overview of the history of Japanese in Colorado. Japanese immigrants first came to Colorado between 1900 and 1910 as railroad laborers. Some became coal miners in southern Colorado; most others became farm laborers. Although the Japanese population during this period was small, communities developed in several locales. The…