Eighty Years After the U.S. Incarceration of Japanese Americans

Two months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 on February 19, 1942. This executive order led to the forced removal of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans.

Military exclusion zones were located in places like California, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. Many of the Japanese Americans that were incarcerated were forced out of their homes, separated depending on if they were Issei or Nisei (first-generation or U.S born children). 

Families were stripped of their identity. Each family received a five digit number to be worn on a tag around their necks. Their names were no longer of importance. Because of the loss of identity, generations of trauma still resonate.

Official terminology referred to these places as “assembly centers” and “Internment camps". Only about 20,000 Japanese Americans were not forcibly removed. While they were free to remain in parts of the United States, they were unwelcome in the places they resided in. 

Along with the Japanese internment camps, the US government also imprisoned 11,500 German Americans as well as 3000 Italian Americans. This was a result of the prejudice and fear raised by the US government.

To be incarcerated in what was labeled as a “War location in Center”, an individual had to be just one-sixteenth Japanese. By the war's end the following year, no Japanese-American was ever convicted of sabotage or espionage.

Japanese Americans lost their homes and businesses. Many were forced to sell their property for far under value. An estimated $3.64 billion (in 2022 dollars) was lost. Forced into the internment camps, the labeled “evacuees” lived in dwellings previously used as horse stalls.

Minoru Yasui, Gordon K. Hirabyashi and Fred T. Korematsu challenged these practices in 1943 and 1944. Most notably, Mitsuye Endo questioned the practices of Military authorities imprisoning citizens without the right to a swift hearing.

Japanese American men who served in the armed services were dismissed after Pearl Harbor and reclassified as aliens. By 1943, military leaders called for more soldiers which made those in the camps eligible. 315 refused to serve but 25,000 Japanese Americans were drafted.

40 years after the end of World War II, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the civil liberties act of 1988. This gave still living Japanese Americans ordered restitution of $20,000 for each one.