Editing Florin, California (section)

===World War II===
Local and federal treatment of Nisei (Japanese immigrants and US-born Japanese Americans) in Florin took a drastic downturn upon the [[Attack on Pearl Harbor|bombing]] of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent war between the US and Japan.  At the time, about 2,500 Florin residents were Nikkei, forming a majority of the town's population.<ref>Mary Tsukamoto, in John Tateishi, ed., And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps (1999), 4-5.</ref> With a little fear and a lot of racial hostility, the federal government sent Japanese and Japanese Americans to internment camps according to [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|FDR's]] [[Executive Order 9066]].  Florin Japanese American resident and educator Mary Tsukamoto recalled "everyone was given short notice for removal. Signs had been nailed to the telephone poles saying that we had to report to various spots."<ref name="Ronald Takaki 1998">Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore:  A history of Asian Americans, Back Bay Books 1998, 591: 379.</ref> Florin's Japanese and Japanese American residents were forced to "register as families.  We had to report to the Elk Grove Masonic Building where we were given our family numbers, No. 2076."<ref name="Ronald Takaki 1998"/> The Elk Grove Masonic Building referred to by Tsukamoto was located in neighboring Elk Grove near a railroad station where the Florin residents were shipped in rail cars to distribution hubs.  At these distribution hubs Florin's residents of Japanese descent were then sent to internment camps far from the coast.

The internment forever changed the character of Florin. Japanese and Japanese American residents had to sell their property within only a few days and often at prices far below their fair market value.  When the Japanese and Japanese Americans were released from the internment camps some were able to return to Florin and start over. Most had to move on to other areas. Florin ceased to be a Japanese American community as it was before the internment.