Ralph Lazo was the first non-Japanese(he was hispanic) American to voluntarily go to the Japanese Internment Camps. Ralph grew up around a lot of discrimination and racism. He was born into a black hospital because at the time segregation affected Latinos as well. Ralph also lived on a Native American Reservation for a short time in his life where he saw much discrimination to the Natives. Living around so much discrimination and racism led him to have a deep morale idea of ending the hate towards people based on their ethnic backgrounds.

Ralph was a teenager when the whole Internment Camp System started. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, this set off a flood of hate towards the japanese, American or not. His friends and their family were told that they were the enemy to this country. He watched his close friends and neighbors be told that they had to leave and be sent away to the internment camps in the west. Ralph's friends and neighbors were forced to get rid of their belongings, so they tried to sell most of it before the government got involved. Jokingly, one of Ralph's friends told him that he should go with them. He decided why not?

Ralph decided to tag along with his friends and go to the camps in his own free will. He told his dad that he was going to "camp". His father thought nothing of it because he was thinking of summer camp. But by the time he realized what Ralph meant, he couldn't do anything about it. Ralph's father was very understanding and knew what Ralph's intention was, so he never told Ralph to come home.

Ralph was taken to the Manzanar camp, the first Internment camp set up in the west. Life wasn't as good in the camps, but everyone got along. While Ralph was at Manzanar, he took up a job as a mailman. Ralph was one of the most popular and nicest people you would have met at Manzanar. Ralph amused and played with the orphans and even got many of his friends together at Christmas time and went caroling. He even became the class president at Manzanar High School.

While Ralph was there voluteerely, he only left twice. The first time he left was when he was told to appear by the draft board. The second time was when he went to represent the Manzanar YMCA in a colorado conference. Ralph could have left camp then, but he always returned.

In 1944, Ralph was drafted into the army and fought in the Pacific Theater. Like most people, Ralph didn't want to fight. What he wanted to do was teach second generation Japanese people how to speak Japanese and use this to translate and use it to get and receive intelligence.

When the camps closed in 1946, Ralph went to college and got a degree in sociology. He eventually became a high school teacher and an academic counselor at Valley College from 1970 to 1987. In the 80's Ronald Reagan gave 20,000 dollars to any survivor of the camps that were still alive, along with a letter of apology saying that it was wrong to have put them through that.

What can we learn from Ralph Lazo?

Through Ralph's actions, we can understand he was highly against discrimination of people of different backgrounds. He put himself in the camps on his own free will to go along with his friends who were being discriminated against for not even being affiliated with the enemy Japanese. So through Ralph's actions, we learn to respect people of all backgrounds and to not shine discrimination and or racism onto anyone.