This is Amy Wagenaar from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. Paul Weiss had a problem. It was 1943, and the United States was in the middle of World War II. Weiss, an immigrant from Prussia, had settled in Mount Clemens and in 1920 started growing roses in greenhouses. His business, the Mount Clemens Rose Gardens, enjoyed great success and helped make Mount Clemens famous as the rose capital of the United States. The outbreak of World War II posed a new challenge for Weiss and his rose business. Many of his workmen joined the armed forces, leaving his greenhouses short of workers. Weiss considered the dilemma and realized that a pool of skilled gardeners was still available. There was just one problem. They were Japanese Americans. Japan's attack on Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into the war. It also ushered in one of the most shameful periods in American history. In February 1942, anti Japanese hysteria led President Franklin Roosevelt to sign an executive order that sent 127,000 Japanese American citizens into internment camps. More than two thirds of them had been born in the United States. Anyone with a single Japanese great grandparent was considered to be of Japanese ancestry and interned. Internment was not limited to the United States. Canada and Mexico also interned their Japanese citizens. Paul Weiss knew that Japanese Americans had earned a reputation as skilled gardeners. In 1943, he asked the federal government for permission to bring some interned Japanese American families to work in his Mount Clemens Rose Gardens. The government gave its approval and dozens of families were saved from the camps and brought to Mount Clemens to work at the rose gardens. One of the workmen, George Segarra, spent the next 40 years working for the business and taught Weiss's grandson, who was also named Paul, everything he knew about growing roses. The Mount Clemens rose gardens continued to prosper after World War II. However, in 1991, the United States removed tariffs on foreign produced roses. Competition led to a 95% drop off in US produced roses. One victim of that decline was the Mount Clemens Rose Gardens, which closed its doors in 1999. Although the greenhouses are gone, what remains to this day are the friendships that developed between the Weiss family and those Japanese American families who came to Mount Clemens. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org.