Abstract
In the name of public safety, the US government forcibly removed more than 110 000 Japanese Americans from their homes along the West Coast of the United States during World War II. Incarcerated in crude barracks located in remote locations, Japanese Americans were suddenly required to share laundry facilities, toilets, showers, and mess halls with hundreds of likewise incarcerated Japanese Americans. With conditions ripe for spreading communicable disease, public health nurses relied on health promotion techniques of the time to prevent epidemic outbreaks of diseases such as measles, polio, and tuberculosis.