From its founding, Castroville was home to immigrants who came from many countries and primarily worked in nearby fields. By the 1920s, about a dozen Japanese families lived in the Castroville area, mostly as farmers leasing land, though some bought land in the names of their American-born children or formed corporations to hold land. Wanting their children to value the traditions of their home country, Japanese immigrants built a school in 1935 that opened in 1936 as a place where Japanese-American youth could study Japanese language and culture and appreciate Japanese customs and heritage; the building also hosted religious services, weddings, and funerals. In the 1930s, Castroville had a small Japanese business district, Japanese residents played a major role in regional farming, and the town’s immigrants came from many backgrounds, but intolerance persisted and California law barred those born in Japan from owning land. In February 1942, under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order #9066, the U.S. military excluded Japanese, Italian, and German aliens from the coast, and in April 1942 all people of Japanese ancestry in Monterey County were ordered with 24-hour notice to report to the detention center at the Salinas Rodeo Grounds. The exclusion forced the Japanese community of Castroville from their homes without knowing where they would go or for how long; everyone, including women, children, citizens, and non-citizens, had to leave. At the Salinas Rodeo Grounds, the government confined 3500 people of Japanese ancestry from the Monterey Bay region in a temporary detention center turned prison with barbed wire and guards, where some lived in barracks and others in stables. On July 4, 1942, Japanese Americans at the Rodeo Grounds were put on trains and sent to the Poston, Arizona, prison camp, where they lived behind barbed wire in the desert for most of the war years after losing the lives they had built. Some men left camp to serve in the all Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, while others were allowed to work in fields in the Midwest and elsewhere. After the war, families had to begin again with little or nothing, facing difficulty finding housing and work and encountering prejudice, though some received help and conditions slowly improved. The schoolhouse’s guiding phrase, kodomo no tame ni, meaning “for the sake of the children,” reflects the enduring hope of immigrant parents that their children will take pride both in their parents’ culture and in America.