Japanese Internment Camps

The Japanese American Internment began on December 7, 1941, and ended in March of 1946. During the internment, roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, of which 70,000 were U.S. citizens by birth, spent much of the war detained in various government-run facilities. In addition, countries along the west coast of Central and South America shipped 2,264 Japanese Latin Americans to the United States for eventual prisoner exchanges with Japan. Though several types of facilities existed, including many lesser known detention centers, the sixteen assembly centers and ten relocation centers, or “concentration camps,” administered by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) became home to nearly all of the internees.

The U.S. government took its first direct steps toward wartime internment of Japanese American citizens more than 5 years prior to its entry into World War II. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Federal Bureau of Invesetigation (FBI) to undertake a 5-year plan to determine which foreignborn residents posed a risk to national security. During the last 2 years prior to America's entry into the war, the United States government compiled lists of dangerous enemy aliens and citizens via intelligence agencies in the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and the military.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt authorized blanket warrants for the arrest of those foreign nationals predetermined as dangerous enemy aliens. Within weeks, thousands of foreign nationals found themselves in DOJ or U.S. Army–run detention centers located throughout the western half of the country. These detention centers also held the Japanese Latin American detainees. In the weeks following America's entrance into the war, the government placed many restrictions on Japanese Americans. The federal government closed the nation's borders while state governments did not allow non-American Japanese to transfer ownership of, or register, their cars. These foreign-born residents had their assets frozen, banks closed, and business licenses revoked, and often had only the cash in their possession at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. On December 27, 1941, Attorney General Francis Biddle issued a press release reiterating Presidential Proclamations from December 7 and 8 proscribing, among other things, ownership of cameras, shortwave radios, guns, swords, and even record players by all enemy aliens.

California's state and federal representatives began in earnest to call for the removal of the Japanese from the coastal region. Politicians such as Congressman Leland Ford and California Attorney General Earl Warren urged officials in Washington to remove the unwanted residents to internment camps whether they were alien or native born. One week later, the California State Personnel Board barred all Japanese Americans from its employ. As demand rose in California, Washington, and Oregon for the removal of the Japanese and their descendants, Senator Hiram Johnson announced a meeting of the Pacific Coast delegates to discuss the situation.

By the end of January, the call for the removal of Japanese from the West Coast had gained considerable voice. Newspapers and other media lent momentum to this outcry with a growing dissemination of anti-Japanese rhetoric and propaganda. Many of the impassioned headlines in the major newspapers along the West Coast reflected a growing racist sentiment. [Page 770]Meanwhile, prominent radio journalist John Hughes insistently pointed out the dangers of sabotage from Japanese aliens as well as the need to remove them from the coast. Well-known columnist Walter Lippman also railed about the inevitability of sabotage, claiming it was a fact that saboteurs were in place and communicating daily with the enemy. Exaggerations and half-truths reported during the beginning of the war created an atmosphere of near-hysteria in the western states.

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