Japanese Relocation Centers During World War II, Nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans Were Under Lock and Key by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco and Shmuel Ross
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Japanese Relocation Centers During World War II, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans were under lock and key by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco and Shmuel Ross On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The evacuation order commenced the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese-American Internment Camp: Tule Japanese heritage to one of 10 Lake, California internment camps—officially called "...I remember my mother wrapping "relocation centers"—in California, A blanket around me Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and my Colorado, and Arkansas. Pretending to fall asleep Why Were the Camps so she would be happy Though I was so Established? excited I couldn't sleep. Roosevelt's executive order was fueled (I hear there were by anti-Japanese sentiment among people herded Into the Hastings Park farmers who competed against like cattle Japanese labor, politicians who sided Families were made to with anti-Japanese constituencies, and move in two hours the general public, whose frenzy was Abandoned everything, leaving pets heightened by the Japanese attack of And possessions at Pearl Harbor. More than 2/3 of the gun point..." Japanese who were interned in the —Joy Kogawa, from spring of 1942 were citizens of the "What I Do I Remember of the United States. Evacuation" (1973), published in The Similar Orders in Canada Chicago Review, Vol. In Canada, similar evacuation orders 42, Nos. 3 & 4 "Two weeks after his were established. Nearly 23,000 Nikkei, twenty-fifth birthday, or Canadians of Japanese descent, Ichiro got off a bus at were sent to camps in British Columbia. Second and Main in Seattle. He had been It was the greatest mass movement in gone four years, two in the history of Canada. camp and two in Though families were generally kept prison. together in the United States, Canada Walking down the street that autumn sent male evacuees to work in road morning with a small, camps or on sugar beet projects. black suitcase, he felt Women and children Nikkei were forced like an intruder in a world to which he had to move to six inner British Columbia no claim. It was just towns. enough that he should feel this way, for, of his Conditions in the U.S. Camps own free will, he had stood before the judge The U.S. internment camps were and said that he would overcrowded and provided poor living not go in the army. At conditions. According to a 1943 report the time there was no published by the War Relocation other choice for him. That was when he was Authority (the administering agency), twenty-three, a man of Japanese Americans were housed in twenty-three. Now, two "tarpaper-covered barracks of simple years older, he was frame construction without plumbing or even more of a man." —John Okada, No-No cooking facilities of any kind." Coal was Boy (1957, reprinted hard to come by, and internees slept by the University of under as many blankets as they were Washington Press, 1980) alloted. Food was rationed out at an expense of 48 cents per internee, and Related Links served by fellow internees in a mess hall • Asian Pacific of 250-300 people. American Leadership positions within the camps Heritage Month were only offered to the Nisei, or • Quiz: Asian American-born, Japanese. The older Pacific generation, or the Issei, were forced to American watch as the government promoted their History children and ignored them. • World War II Timeline Eventually the government allowed • Gordon internees to leave the concentration Kiyoshi camps if they enlisted in the U.S. Army. Hirabayashi This offer was not well received. Only • Fred 1,200 internees chose to do so. Korematsu • Relocation Centers Legal Challenges to Internment Two important legal cases were brought For More Information against the United States concerning the internment. The landmark cases University of Utah: Photographs were Hirabayashi v. United States from Tule Lake (1943), and Korematsu v. United States (California) and Topaz (Utah) (1944). The defendants argued their fifth Internment amendment rights were violated by the Camps U.S. government because of their The San Francisco Museum: ancestry. In both cases, the Supreme News articles Court ruled in favor of the U.S. from The San Francisco government. News Gov't report Closure of the Camps from the War Relocation In 1944, two and a half years after Authority signing Executive Order 9066, fourth- Colorado State term President Franklin D. Roosevelt Archives: Stories of a rescinded the order. The last internment Colorado camp was closed by the end of 1945. Internment Camp and links to other camps Government Apologies and Univ. of Reparations Washington: History of Forced into confinement by the United Japanese States, 5,766 Nisei ultimately renounced Canadian Confinement their American citizenship. In 1968, nearly two dozen years after the camps were closed, the government began reparations to Japanese Americans for property they had lost. In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed legislation which awarded formal payments of $20,000 each to the surviving internees—60,000 in all. This same year, formal apologies were also issued by the government of Canada to Japanese Canadian survivors, who were each repaid the sum of $21,000 Canadian dollars. Other Groups in the Camps While Japanese-Americans comprised the overwhelming majority of those in the camps, thousands of Americans of German, Italian, and other European descent were also forced to relocate there. Many more were classified as "enemy aliens" and subject to increased restrictions. As of 2004, the U.S. Government has made no formal apology or reparations to those affected. Japanese American internment From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia • Have questions? Find out how to ask questions and get answers. • Residents of Japanese ancestry waiting in line for the bus that will transport them to an internment camp. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. Japanese American internment refers to the forcible relocation and internment of approximately 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans to housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps", in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[1][2] The internment of Japanese Americans was effected unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, whereas in Hawaii, where over 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised nearly a third of that territory's population, an additional 1,200[3] to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned.[4] Of those interned, 62 percent were United States citizens.[5][6] President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps.[7] In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders,[8] while noting that the provisions that singled out people of Japanese ancestry were a separate issue outside the scope of the proceedings.[9] In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation stated that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[10] $1.6 billion in reparations were later disbursed by the U.S. government to surviving internees and their heirs.[11] See also: Anti-Japanese sentiment In the first half of the 20th century, California experienced a wave of anti- Japanese prejudice distinct from the Japanese American experience in the broader United States. Over 90% of Japanese immigrants to the USA settled in California, where labor and farm competition fed into general anti-Japanese sentiment.[12] In 1905, California's anti-miscegenation law was amended to prohibit marriages between Caucasians and "Mongolians" (an umbrella term which, at the time, was used in reference to the Japanese, among other ethnicities of East Asian ancestry).[12] That anti-Japanese sentiment was maintained beyond this period is evidenced by the 1924 "Oriental Exclusion Law", which blocked Japanese immigrants from attaining citizenship.[12] In the years 1939–1941, the FBI compiled the Custodial Detention index ("CDI") on citizens, "enemy" aliens and foreign nationals, based principally on census records, in the interest of national security. On June 28, 1940, the Alien Registration Act was passed. Among many other "loyalty" regulations, Section 31 required the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens above the age of 14, and Section 35 required aliens to report any change of address within 5 days. Nearly five million foreign nationals registered at post offices around the country, in the subsequent months.[13][14] [edit] After Pearl Harbor A Japanese American unfurled this banner the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. This Dorothea Lange photograph was taken in March 1942, just prior to the man's internment. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 led some to suspect the Japanese were preparing a full-scale attack on the West Coast of the United States. Japan's rapid military conquest of a large portion of Asia and the Pacific between 1936 and 1942 made their military forces seem unstoppable to some Americans. Civilian and military officials had concerns about the loyalty of the ethnic Japanese on the West Coast and considered them to be potential security risks, although these concerns often arose more from racial bias than actual risk. Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt each questioned Japanese American loyalty. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that "A Jap's a Jap" and testified to Congress, I don't want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here.