Internment of Japanese Americans
During World War II, the United States, by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forcibly relocated and incarcerated at least 125,284 people of Japanese descent in 75 identified incarceration sites. Most lived on the Pacific Coast, in concentration camps in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the inmates were United States citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066 following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Like many Americans at the time, the architects of the removal policy failed to distinguish between Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans (who were legal citizens). Of the 127,000 Japanese Americans who were living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei (literal translation: 'second generation'; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei ('third generation', the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ('first generation') immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.
Date
February 19, 1942 – March 20, 1946
Executive Order 9066 signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Anti-Japanese racism[2]
- Hysteria[2] following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Niihau incident
- Partial financial compensation for lost property under the Japanese-American Claims Act of 1948 signed by Harry Truman
- Formal apology and financial reparations given to surviving victims under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 signed by Ronald Reagan
120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast
Japanese Americans were placed in concentration camps based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 112,000 Japanese Americans who were living on the West Coast were incarcerated in camps which were located in its interior. In Hawaii (which was under martial law), where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated. California defined anyone with 1⁄16th or more Japanese lineage as a person who should be incarcerated. A key member of the Western Defense Command, Colonel Karl Bendetsen, went so far as to say “I am determined that if they have "one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp."[5] The United States Census Bureau assisted the incarceration efforts by providing specific individual census data on Japanese Americans. The Bureau denied its role for decades despite scholarly evidence to the contrary, and its role became more widely acknowledged by 2007. In its 1944 decision Korematsu v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the removals under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, avoiding the issue of the incarceration of U.S. citizens without due process, but ruled on the same day in Ex parte Endo that a loyal citizen could not be detained, which began their release. The day before the Korematsu and Endo rulings were made public, the exclusion orders were rescinded. Japanese Americans were initially barred from military service, but by 1943, they were allowed to join, with 20,000 serving during the war. Over 4,000 students were allowed to leave the camps to attend college. Hospitals in the camps recorded 5,981 births and 1,862 deaths during incarceration. At the time, Japanese incarceration was intended to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose. The scale of the incarceration in proportion to the size of the Japanese American population far surpassed similar measures undertaken against German and Italian Americans who numbered in the millions and of whom some thousands were interned, most of these non-citizens.
In the two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, there was little indication of a public groundswell for incarceration. A survey of the Office of Facts and Figures on February 4 (two weeks prior to the president's order) reported that a majority of Americans expressed satisfaction with existing governmental controls on Japanese Americans. Moreover, in his autobiography in 1962, Attorney General Francis Biddle, who opposed incarceration, downplayed the influence of public opinion in prompting the president's decision. He even considered it doubtful "whether, political and special group press aside, public opinion even on the West Coast supported evacuation."[6] Support for harsher measures toward Japanese Americans increased over time, however, in part since Roosevelt did little to use his office to calm attitudes. According to a March 1942 poll conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion, after incarceration was becoming inevitable, 93% of Americans supported the relocation of Japanese non-citizens from the Pacific Coast while only 1% opposed it. According to the same poll, 59% supported the relocation of Japanese people who were born in the country and were United States citizens, while 25% opposed it.
In the 1970s, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and redress organizations, President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into concentration camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. In 1983, the Commission's report, Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and concluded that the incarceration had been the product of racism. It recommended that the government pay reparations to the detainees. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which officially apologized for the incarceration on behalf of the U.S. government and authorized a payment of $20,000 (equivalent to $52,000 in 2023) to each former detainee who was still alive when the act was passed. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." By 1992, the U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to $4.12 billion in 2023) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated.
Development[edit]
[edit]
Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt[38] on February 19, 1942, authorized military commanders to designate "military areas" at their discretion, "from which any or all persons may be excluded." These "exclusion zones," unlike the "alien enemy" roundups, were applicable to anyone that an authorized military commander might choose, whether citizen or non-citizen. Eventually such zones would include parts of both the East and West Coasts, totaling about 1/3 of the country by area. Unlike the subsequent deportation and incarceration programs that would come to be applied to large numbers of Japanese Americans, detentions and restrictions directly under this Individual Exclusion Program were placed primarily on individuals of German or Italian ancestry, including American citizens.[39] Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066, issued two months after Pearl Harbor. The order allowed regional military commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded."[40] Although the executive order did not mention Japanese Americans, this authority was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were required to leave Alaska[41] and the military exclusion zones from all of California and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, with the exception of those inmates who were being held in government camps.[42] The detainees were not only people of Japanese ancestry, they also included a relatively small number—though still totaling well over ten thousand—of people of German and Italian ancestry as well as Germans who were expelled from Latin America and deported to the U.S.[43]: 124 [44] Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942,[45] while some 5,500 community leaders had been arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack and thus were already in custody.[8]
On March 2, 1942, General John DeWitt, commanding general of the Western Defense Command, publicly announced the creation of two military restricted zones.[46] Military Area No. 1 consisted of the southern half of Arizona and the western half of California, Oregon, and Washington, as well as all of California south of Los Angeles. Military Area No. 2 covered the rest of those states. DeWitt's proclamation informed Japanese Americans they would be required to leave Military Area 1, but stated that they could remain in the second restricted zone.[47] Removal from Military Area No. 1 initially occurred through "voluntary evacuation."[45] Japanese Americans were free to go anywhere outside of the exclusion zone or inside Area 2, with arrangements and costs of relocation to be borne by the individuals. The policy was short-lived; DeWitt issued another proclamation on March 27 that prohibited Japanese Americans from leaving Area 1.[46] A night-time curfew, also initiated on March 27, 1942, placed further restrictions on the movements and daily lives of Japanese Americans.[43]
Included in the forced removal was Alaska, which, like Hawaii, was an incorporated U.S. territory located in the northwest extremity of the continental United States. Unlike the contiguous West Coast, Alaska was not subject to any exclusion zones due to its small Japanese population. Nevertheless, the Western Defense Command announced in April 1942 that all Japanese people and Americans of Japanese ancestry were to leave the territory for incarceration camps inland. By the end of the month, over 200 Japanese residents regardless of citizenship were exiled from Alaska, most of them ended up at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Southern Idaho.[48]
Eviction from the West Coast began on March 24, 1942, with Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1, which gave the 227 Japanese American residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington six days to prepare for their "evacuation" directly to Manzanar.[49] Colorado governor Ralph Lawrence Carr was the only elected official to publicly denounce the incarceration of American citizens (an act that cost his reelection, but gained him the gratitude of the Japanese American community, such that a statue of him was erected in the Denver Japantown's Sakura Square).[50] A total of 108 exclusion orders issued by the Western Defense Command over the next five months completed the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast in August 1942.[51]
In addition to imprisoning those of Japanese descent in the US, the US also interned people of Japanese (and German and Italian) descent deported from Latin America. Thirteen Latin American countries—Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru—cooperated with the US by apprehending, detaining and deporting to the US 2,264 Japanese Latin American citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry.[52][53]
Flag of allegiance pledge at Raphael Weill Public School, Geary and Buchanan Streets, San Francisco, April 20, 1942
Teacher Lily Namimoto and her second grade class
Fourth grade class in barracks 3-4-B at Rohwer
General office in the high school at Rohwer
Senior physics class in barracks 11-F at the temporary high school quarters
A part of the brass section of the high school band
Incarceration ends[edit]
On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court handed down two decisions on the legality of the incarceration under Executive Order 9066. Korematsu v. United States, a 6–3 decision upholding a Nisei's conviction for violating the military exclusion order, stated that, in general, the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast was constitutional. However, Ex parte Endo unanimously declared on that same day that loyal citizens of the United States, regardless of cultural descent, could not be detained without cause.[208][209] In effect, the two rulings held that, while the eviction of American citizens in the name of military necessity was legal, the subsequent incarceration was not—thus paving the way for their release.
Having been alerted to the Court's decision, the Roosevelt administration issued Public Proclamation No. 21 the day before the Korematsu and Endo rulings were made public, on December 17, 1944, rescinding the exclusion orders and declaring that Japanese Americans could return to the West Coast the next month.[210]
Although War Relocation Authority (WRA) Director Dillon Myer and others had pushed for an earlier end to the incarceration, the Japanese Americans were not allowed to return to the West Coast until January 2, 1945, after the November 1944 election, so as not to impede Roosevelt's reelection campaign.[211] Many younger detainees had already been sent to Midwest or Eastern cities to pursue work or educational opportunities. For example, 20,000 were sent to Lake View, Chicago.[212] The remaining population began to leave the camps to try to rebuild their lives at home. Former inmates were given $25 and a train ticket to wherever they wanted to go, but many had little or nothing to return to, having lost their homes and businesses. When Japanese Americans were sent to the camps they could only take a few items with them and while incarcerated could only work for menial jobs with a small monthly salary of $12–$19. When incarceration ended, they therefore had few savings to survive on.[213] Some emigrated to Japan, although many of these were repatriated against their will.[214][215] The camps remained open for residents who were not ready to return (mostly elderly Issei and families with young children), but the WRA pressured stragglers to leave by gradually eliminating services in camp. Those who had not left by each camp's close date were forcibly removed and sent back to the West Coast.[216]
Nine of the ten WRA camps were shut down by the end of 1945, although Tule Lake, which held "renunciants" slated for deportation to Japan, was not closed until March 20, 1946.[217][218][219][220] Japanese Latin Americans brought to the U.S. from Peru and other countries, who were still being held in the DOJ camps at Santa Fe and Crystal City, took legal action in April 1946 in an attempt to avoid deportation to Japan.[107]: 223
Terminology debate[edit]
Misuse of the term "internment"[edit]
The legal term "internment" has been used in regards to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans. This term, however, derives from international conventions regarding the treatment of enemy nationals during wartime and specifically limits internment to those (noncitizen) enemy nationals who threaten the security of the detaining power. The internment of selected enemy alien belligerents, as opposed to mass incarceration, is legal both under US and international law.[243] UCLA Asian American studies professor Lane Hirabayashi pointed out that the history of the term internment, to mean the arrest and holding of non-citizens, could only be correctly applied to Issei, Japanese people who were not legal citizens. These people were a minority during Japanese incarceration and thus Roger Daniels, emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, has concluded that this terminology is wrongfully used by any government that wishes to include groups other than the Issei.[244]
Which term to use[edit]
During World War II, the camps were referred to both as relocation centers and concentration camps by government officials and in the press.[245] Roosevelt himself referred to the camps as concentration camps on different occasions, including at a press conference held on October 20, 1942.[246][245] In 1943, his attorney general Francis Biddle lamented that "The present practice of keeping loyal American citizens in concentration camps for longer than is necessary is dangerous and repugnant to the principles of our government."[247]
Following World War II, other government officials made statements suggesting that the use of the term "relocation center" had been largely euphemistic. In 1946, former Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes wrote "We gave the fancy name of 'relocation centers' to these dust bowls, but they were concentration camps nonetheless."[248] In a 1961 interview, Harry S. Truman stated "They were
concentration camps. They called it relocation but they put them in concentration camps, and I was against it. We were in a period of emergency, but it was still the wrong thing to do."[249]
In subsequent decades, debate has arisen over the terminology used to refer to camps in which Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents, were incarcerated by the US government during the war.[250][251][252] These camps have been referred to as "war relocation centers", "relocation camps", "relocation centers", "internment camps", and "concentration camps", and the controversy over which term is the most accurate and appropriate continues.[100][253][254][255][256]
On April 22, 2022, The Associated Press edited its entry for Japanese internment,[257] changing the entry heading to Japanese internment, incarceration, and adding the following wording:[258]
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Archives and Records Administration.