Years of discrimination and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor led to the forced removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans. All Japanese Americans on the West Coast were affected by the forced evacuation, including women and children and the elderly. By the time the last internees were released in 1946, they had lost homes and businesses estimated to be worth 5 to 7 billion dollars today. When World War II began, anti-Japanese sentiment had been building since the early 1900s, when the first distinctly anti-Japanese policy sought to limit immigration. Later, other local and national laws restricted the freedom of Japanese Americans.