Reparations for Japanese Internments

Reparations for Japanese internments are payments that were made by the U.S. government to persons of Japanese ancestry as compensation for their mistreatment during World War II. During the war against Germany, Japan, and Italy, wartime hysteria combined with racial prejudice to cause fear that persons of Japanese ancestry who were living in the United States—many of them second- or third-generation U.S. citizens—would ally with the Japanese government and seek to aid the overthrow of the United States. The fear reached such a high level that the U.S. government eventually forced more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and settle in internment camps, where they were essentially held prisoner until the end of the war. After the war, a small amount of reparations ...