Every year, classrooms throughout King County learn about American history, and sometimes history has a local connection.

For the students at Mill Creek Middle School in the Kent School District, this includes learning about 1942’s Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced relocation and incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese-Americans and residents of Japanese descent following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

According to the Puyallup Valley Japanese-American Citizens League (JACL) website, a makeshift temporary concentration camp was set up at the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup from April to September 1942, where over 7,500 people were imprisoned for simply being of Japanese descent, before being moved to more permanent concentration camps further inland.

At the beginnin

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