The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II saw over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry forcibly relocated to internment camps in the western interior of the United States. This was ordered by President Roosevelt shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor due to racism and war hysteria rather than legitimate security concerns. While some were released, most spent years in camps until the war ended. It is now widely recognized as a failure of political leadership and civil rights violation.

1. Internment of Japanese Americans
Text Wikipedia
Slideshow Anders Dernback

2. Internment of Japanese Americans
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States
during World War II was the forced relocation and
incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of
the country of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry,
most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast. Sixty-two percent of
the internees were United States citizens. These actions
were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly
after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor

3. Of 127,000 Japanese Americans 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
127 000 Japanese Americans

4. 1942 editorial propaganda cartoon in the New York newspaper
PM by Dr. Seuss depicting Japanese Americans in California,
Oregon, and Washington–states with the largest population of
Japanese Americans–as prepared to conduct sabotage
against the U.S.

5. More racism than any security risk
Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population
concentrations and regional politics. More than 112,000 Japanese
Americans living on the West Coast were forced into interior camps.
However, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans
composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were
also interned. The internment is considered to have resulted more from
racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans.
California defined anyone with 1/16th or more Japanese lineage as
sufficient to be interned. Colonel Karl Bendetsen, the architect behind
the program, went so far as saying anyone with "one drop of Japanese
blood" qualified

6. A Japanese American shop, Asahi
Dye Works, closing. The notice on
the front is a reference to Owens
Valley being the first and one of the
largest Japanese American
detention centers.

7. Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066
Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19,
1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate
"military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded.
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 and the military exclusion zones from all
of California and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, except for
those in government camps. Approximately 5,000 Japanese
Americans relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942,
while some 5,500 community leaders had been arrested immediately
after the Pearl Harbor attack and thus were already in custody.

10. Hayward, California.
"Members of the
Mochida family
awaiting evacuation
bus. Identification tags
are used to aid in
keeping the family unit
intact during all
phases of evacuation.
Mochida operated a
nursery and five
greenhouses on a two-
acre site in Eden
Township. He raised
snapdragons and
sweet peas.

11. A child is "Tagged for
evacuation", Salinas, California,
May 1942. Photo by Russell Lee.

15. Children at the Weill
public school in San
Francisco pledge
allegiance to the
American flag in
April 1942, prior to
the internment of
Japanese Americans.

17. Institutions of the War
Relocation Authority in the
Midwestern, Southern, and
Western United States
Date February 19, 1942 –
March 20, 1946
Location
Western United States,
and parts of Midwestern and
Southern United States
PrisonersBetween 110,000
and 120,000 Japanese
Americans living on the West
Coast
1,200 to 1,800 living in Hawaii

19. A Japanese American
unfurled this banner in
Oakland, California the
day after the Pearl
Harbor attack. This
Dorothea Lange
photograph was taken
in March 1942, just
prior to the man's
internment.

30. The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by
spying and providing confidential neighborhood information 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 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
constitutionality of the removal by ruling against Fred Korematsu's
appeal for violating an exclusion order. The Court limited its decision to
the validity of the exclusion orders, avoiding the issue of the
incarceration of U.S. citizens without due proces
Spying on Japanese Americans (deneid fact)

31. List of Camps
Arcadia, California (Santa Anita Racetrack, stables)
(Santa Anita assembly center)
Fresno, California (Fresno Fairgrounds, racetrack,
stables)
Marysville / Arboga, California (migrant workers'
camp)
Mayer, Arizona (Civilian Conservation Corps camp)
Merced, California (county fairgrounds)
Owens Valley, California
Parker Dam, Arizona
Pinedale, California (Pinedale Assembly Center,
warehouses)
Pomona, California (Los Angeles County
Fairgrounds, racetrack, stables) (Pomona assembly
center)
Portland, Oregon (Pacific International Livestock
Exposition,
Puyallup, Washington (fairgrounds racetrack
stables, Informally known as "Camp Harmony")
Sacramento, California Camp Kohler (Site of
Present-Day Walerga Park) (migrant workers' camp)
Salinas, California (fairgrounds, racetrack, stables)
San Bruno, California (Tanforan racetrack, stables)
Stockton, California (San Joaquin County
Fairgrounds, racetrack, stables)
Tulare, California (fairgrounds, racetrack, stables)
Turlock, California (Stanislaus County Fairgrounds)
Woodland, California

32. Facilities
While this event is most commonly called the internment of Japanese
Americans, the government operated several different types of camps
holding Japanese Americans. The best known facilities were the military-
run Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) Assembly Centers and
the civilian-run War Relocation Authority (WRA) Relocation Centers,
which are generally (but unofficially) referred to as "internment camps".
Scholars have urged dropping such euphemisms and refer to them as
concentration camps and the people as incarcerated. The Department of
Justice (DOJ) operated camps officially called Internment Camps, which
were used to detain those suspected of crimes or of "enemy
sympathies". The government also operated camps for a limited number
of German Americans and Italian Americans, who sometimes were
assigned to share facilities with the Japanese Americans.

33. DOJ and Army internment camps
Eight U.S. Department of Justice Camps (in Texas, Idaho, North Dakota, New
Mexico, and Montana) held Japanese Americans, primarily non-citizens and their
families. The camps were run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, under
the umbrella of the DOJ, and guarded by Border Patrol agents rather than military
police. The population of these camps included approximately 3,800 of the 5,500
Buddhist and Christian ministers, school instructors, newspaper workers, fishermen,
and community leaders who had been accused of fifth column activity and arrested
by the FBI after Pearl Harbor. (The remaining 1,700 were released to WRA
relocation centers.) Immigrants and nationals of German and Italian ancestry were
also held in these facilities, often in the same camps as Japanese Americans.
Approximately 7,000 German Americans and 3,000 Italian Americans from Hawai'i
and the U.S. mainland were interned in DOJ camps, along with 500 German
seamen already in custody after being rescued from the SS Columbus in 1939.

34. WCCA Civilian Assembly Centers
Executive Order 9066 authorized the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry
from the West Coast; however, it was signed before there were any facilities
completed to house the displaced Japanese Americans. After the voluntary
evacuation program failed to result in many families leaving the exclusion zone,
the military took charge of the now-mandatory evacuation. On April 9, 1942, the
Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) was established by the Western
Defense Command to coordinate the forced removal of Japanese Americans to
inland concentration camps.
The relocation centers faced opposition from inland communities near the
proposed sites who disliked the idea of their new "Jap" neighbors. In addition,
government forces were struggling to build what would essentially be self-sufficient
towns in very isolated, undeveloped, and harsh regions of the country; they were
not prepared to house the influx of over 110,000 evacuees

35. WRA Relocation Centers
The War Relocation Authority (WRA) was the U.S. civilian agency
responsible for the relocation and detention. The WRA was created by
President Roosevelt on March 18, 1942, with Executive Order 9102 and
officially ceased to exist June 30, 1946. Milton S. Eisenhower, then an
official of the Department of Agriculture, was chosen to head the WRA.
In the 1943 US Government film Japanese Relocation he said, "This
picture tells how the mass migration was accomplished. Neither the
Army, not the War Relocation Authority relish the idea of taking men,
women and children from their homes, their shops and their farms. So,
the military and civilian agencies alike, determined to do the job as a
democracy should—with real consideration for the people involved

37. Justice Department detention camps
Crystal City, Texas
Fort Lincoln Internment Camp
Fort Missoula, Montana
Fort Stanton, New Mexico
Kenedy, Texas
Kooskia, Idaho
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Seagoville, Texas
Forest Park, Georgia
The Citizen Isolation Centers were for those
considered to be problem inmates.
Leupp, Arizona
Moab, Utah (AKA Dalton Wells)
Fort Stanton, New Mexico (AKA Old Raton Ranch)
Immigration and Naturalization Service facilities
East Boston Immigration Station
Ellis Island
Cincinnati, Ohio
San Pedro, Los Angeles
Seattle, Washington
Sharp Park, California
Tuna Canyon, Los Angeles

38. Angels Island
Angel Island is an island in San Francisco Bay. Originally
the home of a military installation, the island now offers
picturesque views of the San Francisco skyline, the Marin
County Headlands and Mount Tamalpais. The entire
island is included within Angel Island State Park,
administered by California State Parks. The island, a
California Historical Landmark, has been used for a
variety of purposes, including military forts, a US Public
Health Service Quarantine Station, and a US Bureau of
Immigration inspection and detention facility. The Angel
Island Immigration Station on the northeast corner of the
island, where officials detained, inspected, and examined
approximately one million immigrants, has been
designated a National Historic Landmark.

39. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Bliss#/media/File:Aerial_view_Fort_Bliss_1968.jpg
Fort
Bliss
New Mexico
Fort Bliss is a
United States Army
post in New Mexico
and Texas, with its
headquarters in El
Paso, Texas. Named
in honor of LTC
William Bliss (1815-
1853)

40. In 1980, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American
Citizens League 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. The Commission's report, titled 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 internees. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law
the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which apologized for the internment on behalf of the
U.S. government and authorized a payment of $20,000 (equivalent to $43,000 in
2019) to each camp survivor. The legislation admitted that government actions were
based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership. The U.S.
government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to
$3,460,000,000 in 2019) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been
interned and their heirs

41. U.S. President Ronald
Reagan signs the Civil
Liberties Act of 1988 in
August 1988, which
granted reparations for
the internment of
Japanese Americans.
The act granted each surviving internee about US$20,000 in compensation (or, $40,000 after inflation-
adjustment in 2016 dollars), with payments beginning in 1990. The legislation stated that government
actions had been based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" as opposed
to legitimate security reasons. A total of 82,219 received redress checks
Over 81,800 people
qualified by 1998 and
$1.6 billion was
distributed among them.