Japanese American Internment

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the military to relocate nearly 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry (two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens) who lived on the coast of the United States to internment camps located farther inland. They were forced to leave their homes as a preventive measure against any sabotage or espionage that might be perpetrated against the United States during World War II.

In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against the detention of U.S. citizens without cause and rescinded the order. The last camp closed in 1946. A previous study conducted by the State Department had concluded that the people of Japanese ancestry living on the U.S. west coast posed no threat to the United States, but after the assault on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which placed the matter under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of War. The U.S. Western Defense Command designated the west coast and the border of Arizona as an exclusion zone and issued orders for all Japanese men, women, and children living in the area to be removed to relocation centers.

Transcript

• [Music] Evacuation; more than 100,000 men, women and children, all of Japanese ancestry, removed from their homes in the Pacific Coast States to wartime communities, established in out of the way places. Their evacuation does not imply individual disloyalty, but was ordered to reduce a military hazard at a time when danger of invasion was great. Two thirds of the evacuees or American citizens by right of birth; the rest are their Japanese born parents and grandparents. The people are not under suspicion. They are not prisoners; they are not internees. They are merely dislocated people.

Under the jurisdiction of the War Relocation Authority, individuals were rushed into temporary quarters arranged at fairgrounds or former racetrack stables. Allowed to take with them only what they could carry, people boarded trains without knowing their destination and were deposited at army-managed assembly centers. With the U.S. victory over the Japanese at Midway in June 1942, and thus the removal of any likelihood of attack by the Japanese on the mainland, the relocation program forged ahead and moved the evacuees from their temporary quarters to 10 relocation centers. They were Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Minidoka in Idaho, Topaz in Utah, Amache in Colorado, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, and Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas. Because most detainees were evacuated from the west coast and had no idea of their destinations, they failed to pack appropriately for winters like those in Wyoming.

The sparse facilities in the internment camps met international laws but left much to be desired. Many structures were quickly built by contractors during the summer of 1942 and were poorly equipped for family living. Because most detainees were evacuated from the West Coast and had no idea of their destination, they failed to pack appropriately for winter weather.

Many of the dwellings were tar-papered barracks built for soldiers; they were only partially completed and contained no plumbing or cooking facilities. Each block contained a mess hall and facilities for latrines, showers, and laundry. The centers were enclosed with barbed-wire fences and was watched by army guards in watchtowers. The residents faced problems of housing, food, employment, medical care, education, internal security, and religious worship.

...