essay on japanese internment

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Japanese Internment Camps

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 17, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Japanese internment camps were established during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066 . From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent, including U.S. citizens, would be incarcerated in isolated camps. Enacted in reaction to the Pearl Harbor attacks and the ensuing war, the incarceration of Japanese Americans is considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.

Executive Order 9066

On February 19, 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 with the stated intention of preventing espionage on American shores.

Military zones were created in California, Washington and Oregon—states with a large population of Japanese Americans. Then Roosevelt’s executive order forcibly removed Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes. Executive Order 9066 affected the lives about 120,000 people—the majority of whom were American citizens.

Canada soon followed suit, forcibly removing 21,000 of its residents of Japanese descent from its west coast. Mexico enacted its own version, and eventually 2,264 more people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina to the United States.

Anti-Japanese American Activity 

Weeks before the order, the Navy removed citizens of Japanese descent from Terminal Island near the Port of Los Angeles.

On December 7, 1941, just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI rounded-up 1,291 Japanese American community and religious leaders, arresting them without evidence and freezing their assets.

In January, the arrestees were transferred to prison camps in Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota, many unable to inform their families and most remaining for the duration of the war.

Concurrently, the FBI searched the private homes of thousands of Japanese American residents on the West Coast, seizing items considered contraband.

One-third of Hawaii’s population was of Japanese descent. In a panic, some politicians called for their mass incarceration. Japanese-owned fishing boats were impounded.

Some Japanese American residents were arrested and 1,500 people—one percent of the Japanese population in Hawaii—were sent to prison camps on the U.S. mainland.

Photos of Japanese American Relocation and Incarceration

John DeWitt

Lt. General John L. DeWitt, leader of the Western Defense Command, believed that the civilian population needed to be taken control of to prevent a repeat of Pearl Harbor.

To argue his case, DeWitt prepared a report filled with known falsehoods, such as examples of sabotage that were later revealed to be the result of cattle damaging power lines.

DeWitt suggested the creation of the military zones and Japanese detainment to Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Attorney General Francis Biddle. His original plan included Italians and Germans, though the idea of rounding-up Americans of European descent was not as popular.

At Congressional hearings in February 1942, a majority of the testimonies, including those from California Governor Culbert L. Olson and State Attorney General Earl Warren , declared that all Japanese should be removed.

Biddle pleaded with the president that mass incarceration of citizens was not required, preferring smaller, more targeted security measures. Regardless, Roosevelt signed the order.

War Relocation Authority

After much organizational chaos, about 15,000 Japanese Americans willingly moved out of prohibited areas. Inland state citizens were not keen for new Japanese American residents, and they were met with racist resistance.

Ten state governors voiced opposition, fearing the Japanese Americans might never leave, and demanded they be locked up if the states were forced to accept them.

A civilian organization called the War Relocation Authority was set up in March 1942 to administer the plan, with Milton S. Eisenhower from the Department of Agriculture to lead it. Eisenhower only lasted until June 1942, resigning in protest over what he characterized as incarcerating innocent citizens.

Relocation to 'Assembly Centers'

Army-directed removals began on March 24. People had six days notice to dispose of their belongings other than what they could carry.

Anyone who was at least 1/16th Japanese was evacuated, including 17,000 children under age 10, as well as several thousand elderly and disabled residents.

Japanese Americans reported to "Assembly Centers" near their homes. From there they were transported to a "Relocation Center" where they might live for months before transfer to a permanent "Wartime Residence."

Assembly Centers were located in remote areas, often reconfigured fairgrounds and racetracks featuring buildings not meant for human habitation, like horse stalls or cow sheds, that had been converted for that purpose. In Portland, Oregon , 3,000 people stayed in the livestock pavilion of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Facilities.

The Santa Anita Assembly Center, just several miles northeast of Los Angeles, was a de-facto city with 18,000 incarcerated, 8,500 of whom lived in stables. Food shortages and substandard sanitation were prevalent in these facilities.

Life in 'Assembly Centers'

Assembly Centers offered work to prisoners with the policy that they should not be paid more than an Army private. Jobs ranged from doctors to teachers to laborers and mechanics. A couple were the sites of camouflage net factories, which provided work.

Over 1,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans were sent to other states to do seasonal farm work. Over 4,000 of the incarcerated population were allowed to leave to attend college.

Conditions in 'Relocation Centers'

There were a total of 10 prison camps, called "Relocation Centers." Typically the camps included some form of barracks with communal eating areas. Several families were housed together. Residents who were labeled as dissidents were forced to a special prison camp in Tule Lake, California.

Two prison camps in Arizona were located on Native American reservations, despite the protests of tribal councils, who were overruled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Each Relocation Center was its own "town," and included schools, post offices and work facilities, as well as farmland for growing food and keeping livestock. Each prison camp "town" was completely surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

Net factories offered work at several Relocation Centers. One housed a naval ship model factory. There were also factories in different Relocation Centers that manufactured items for use in other prison camps, including garments, mattresses and cabinets. Several housed agricultural processing plants.

Violence in Prison Camps

Violence occasionally occurred in the prison camps. In Lordsburg, New Mexico , prisoners were delivered by trains and forced to march two miles at night to the camp. On July 27, 1942, during a night march, two Japanese Americans, Toshio Kobata and Hirota Isomura, were shot and killed by a sentry who claimed they were attempting to escape. Japanese Americans testified later that the two elderly men were disabled and had been struggling during the march to Lordsburg. The sentry was found not guilty by the army court martial board.

On August 4, 1942, a riot broke out in the Santa Anita Assembly Center, the result of anger about insufficient rations and overcrowding. At California's Manzanar War Relocation Center , tensions resulted in the beating of Fred Tayama, a Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) leader, by six men. JACL members were believed to be supporters of the prison camp's administration. 

Fearing a riot, police tear-gassed crowds that had gathered at the police station to demand the release of Harry Ueno. Ueno had been arrested for allegedly assaulting Tayama. James Ito was killed instantly and several others were wounded. Among those injured was Jim Kanegawa, 21, who died of complications five days later.

At the Topaz Relocation Center , 63-year-old prisoner James Hatsuki Wakasa was shot and killed by military police after walking near the perimeter fence. Two months later, a couple was shot at for strolling near the fence.

In October 1943, the Army deployed tanks and soldiers to  Tule Lake Segregation Center  in northern California to crack down on protests. Japanese American prisoners at Tule Lake had been striking over food shortages and unsafe conditions that had led to an accidental death in October 1943. At the same camp, on May 24, 1943, James Okamoto, a 30-year-old prisoner who drove a construction truck, was shot and killed by a guard.  

Fred Korematsu

In 1942, 23-year-old Japanese-American Fred Korematsu was arrested for refusing to relocate to a Japanese prison camp. His case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where his attorneys argued in Korematsu v. United States that Executive Order 9066 violated the Fifth Amendment . 

Korematsu lost the case, but he went on to become a civil rights activist and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. With the creation of California’s Fred Korematsu Day, the United States saw its first U.S. holiday named for an Asian American. But it took another Supreme Court decision to halt the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Mitsuye Endo

The prison camps ended in 1945 following the  Supreme Court decision,  Ex parte Mitsuye Endo . In this case, justices ruled unanimously that the War Relocation Authority “has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.”

The case was brought on behalf of Mitsuye Endo, the daughter of Japanese immigrants from Sacramento, California. After filing a habeas corpus petition, the government offered to free her, but Endo refused, wanting her case to address the entire issue of Japanese incarceration.

One year later, the Supreme Court made the decision, but gave President Truman the chance to begin camp closures before the announcement. One day after Truman made his announcement, the Supreme Court revealed its decision.

Reparations

The last Japanese internment camp closed in March 1946. President Gerald Ford officially repealed Executive Order 9066 in 1976, and in 1988, Congress issued a formal apology and passed the Civil Liberties Act awarding $20,000 each to over 80,000 Japanese Americans as reparations for their treatment.

Japanese Relocation During World War II . National Archives . Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord and R. Lord . Lordsburg Internment POW Camp. Historical Society of New Mexico . Smithsonian Institute .

Watch the documentary event, FDR . Available to stream now.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 7

• Beginning of World War II
• 1940 - Axis gains momentum in World War II
• 1941 Axis momentum accelerates in WW2
• Pearl Harbor
• FDR and World War II

Japanese internment

• American women and World War II
• 1942 Tide turning in World War II in Europe
• World War II in the Pacific in 1942
• 1943 Axis losing in Europe
• American progress in the Pacific in 1944
• 1944 - Allies advance further in Europe
• 1945 - End of World War II
• The Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb
• The United Nations
• The Second World War
• Shaping American national identity from 1890 to 1945

• President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 resulted in the relocation of 112,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast into internment camps during the Second World War.
• Japanese Americans sold their businesses and houses for a fraction of their value before being sent to the camps. In the process, they lost their livelihoods and much of their lifesavings.
• In Korematsu v. United States (1944) the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of internment. In 1988, the United States issued an official apology for internment and compensated survivors.

Executive Order 9066

Korematsu v. united states (1944), aftermath and redress, what do you think.

• On internment, see Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and The Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2013), 339; Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, Harry H.L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans, from Relocation to Redress (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991); Wendy L. Ng, Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002).
• See David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 754.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 756.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 757.
• “Abyss of racism . . .” quoted in Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Cases (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 335. “I dissent . . .” quoted in Otis Stephens and John Scheb, American Constitutional Law , v. 1 (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008), 224.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 759.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 760.
• William Yoshino and John Tateishi, " The Japanese American Incarceration: The Journey to Redress ," excerpted from Human Rights , American Bar Association, Spring 2000.

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Educator Resources

Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II

In his speech to Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was "a date which will live in infamy." The attack launched the United States fully into the two theaters of World War II – Europe and the Pacific. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the United States had been involved in a non-combat role, through the Lend-Lease Program that supplied England, China, Russia, and other anti-fascist countries of Europe with munitions.

The attack on Pearl Harbor also launched a rash of fear about national security, especially on the West Coast. In February 1942, just two months later, President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, issued Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans. The order authorized the Secretary of War and military commanders to evacuate all persons deemed a threat from the West Coast to internment camps, that the government called "relocation centers," further inland.  Read more...

Primary Sources

Links go to DocsTeach , the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.

Meeting Between Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt and Representatives of the Department of Justice and the Army at the Office of Commanding General, Headquarters, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, in San Francisco, 1/4/1942

Executive Order 9066 Issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 2/19/1942

Posting of Exclusion Order in San Francisco, Directing Removal of Persons of Japanese Ancestry from the First Section in San Francisco to be Affected by the Evacuation, 4/11/1942

Thank You Note at the Iseri Drugstore in "Little Tokyo" in Los Angeles, California, 4/11/1942

Merchandise Sale in San Francisco, California, Where Customers Buy Goods Prior to Evacuation and Internment, 4/4/1942

Children Pledge Allegiance to the Flag in San Francisco, California, at Raphael Weill Public School, 4/20/1942

The Shibuya Family at Their Home in Mountain View, California, Before Being Sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming Days Later, 4/18/1942

Ranch Superintendent Henry Futamachi (Left) Discusses Agriculture with Ranch Owner John MacKinley Before Evacuation and Internment, 4/10/1942

Dave Tatsuno Reading to His Son and Packing His Possessions Prior to Evacuation and Internment, 4/13/1942

Residents of Japanese Ancestry File Forms in San Francisco, Two Days Before Evacuation and Internment, 4/4/1942

Residents of Japanese Ancestry, With Baggage Stacked, Waiting for a Bus to be Evacuated at the Wartime Civil Control Administration in San Francisco, 4/6/1942

Japanese Family Heads and Persons Living Alone Line up for "Processing" in Response to Civilian Exclusion Order Number 20, 4/25/1942

Baggage Being Sorted and Trucked to Owners in Their Barracks at the Minidoka Internment Camp in Eden, Idaho, 8/17/1942

Registering and Assigning Barracks to the Newly Arrived at Minidoka Internment Camp in Eden, Idaho, 8/17/1942

The Hirano Family Posing with a Photograph of a United States Serviceman at the Colorado River Internment Camp in Poston, Arizona

High School Campus at Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming — Classes are Held in Tarpaper-covered, Barrack-style Buildings, 6/1943

The Poster Crew at Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming, Making Fire and Safety Posters, Announcements for Public Gatherings and Dances, and General Instructions, 9/14/1942

Court Session at Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming, Presiding Over Infractions of Camp Regulations and Civil Court Cases, 6/4/1943

Coal Crew at Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming, Providing Heat for Residents During Cold Winter Months, 9/15/1942

Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 – Written by General DeWitt, who Oversaw the Internment of Japanese-Americans, Providing a Favorable Overview of the "Evacuation Program"

This 10-minute film clip called "Japanese-Americans" (1945) comes from Army-Navy Screen Magazine , a biweekly film series for servicemen during World War II. It highlights the 100th Infantry Battalion, composed largely of Japanese-Americans.

This video clip shows President Ronald Reagan Giving Remarks and Signing the Japanese-American Internment Compensation Bill, 8/10/1988

Teaching Activity

In Japanese American Incarceration During World War II on DocsTeach  students analyze a variety of documents and photographs to learn how the government justified the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and how civil liberties were denied.

Additional Background Information

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had identified German, Italian, and Japanese aliens who were suspected of being potential enemy agents; and they were kept under surveillance. Following the attack at Pearl Harbor, government suspicion arose not only around aliens who came from enemy nations, but around all persons of Japanese descent, whether foreign born ( issei ) or American citizens ( nisei ). During congressional committee hearings, representatives of the Department of Justice raised logistical, constitutional, and ethical objections. Regardless, the task was turned over to the U.S. Army as a security matter.

The entire West Coast was deemed a military area and was divided into military zones. Executive Order 9066 authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command proceeded to announce curfews that included only Japanese Americans. Next, he encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas; about seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied.

On March 29, 1942, under the authority of the executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-American West Coast residents on a 48-hour notice. Only a few days prior to the proclamation, on March 21, Congress had passed Public Law 503, which made violation of Executive Order 9066 a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Because of the perception of "public danger," all Japanese Americans within varied distances from the Pacific coast were targeted. Unless they were able to dispose of or make arrangements for care of their property within a few days, their homes, farms, businesses, and most of their private belongings were lost forever.

From the end of March to August, approximately 112,000 persons were sent to "assembly centers" – often racetracks or fairgrounds – where they waited and were tagged to indicate the location of a long-term "relocation center" that would be their home for the rest of the war. Nearly 70,000 of the evacuees were American citizens. There were no charges of disloyalty against any of these citizens, nor was there any vehicle by which they could appeal their loss of property and personal liberty.

"Relocation centers" were situated many miles inland, often in remote and desolate locales. Sites included Tule Lake and Manzanar in California; Gila River and Poston in Arizona; Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas, Minidoka in Idaho; Topaz in Utah; Heart Mountain in Wyoming; and Granada in Colorado. (Incarceration rates were significantly lower in the territory of Hawaii, where Japanese Americans made up over one-third of the population and their labor was needed to sustain the economy. However, martial law had been declared in Hawaii immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Army issued hundreds of military orders, some applicable only to persons of Japanese ancestry.)

In the "relocation centers" (also called "internment camps"), four or five families, with their sparse collections of clothing and possessions, shared tar-papered army-style barracks. Most lived in these conditions for nearly three years or more until the end of the war. Gradually some insulation was added to the barracks and lightweight partitions were added to make them a little more comfortable and somewhat private. Life took on some familiar routines of socializing and school. However, eating in common facilities, using shared restrooms, and having limited opportunities for work interrupted other social and cultural patterns. Persons who resisted were sent to a special camp at Tule Lake, CA, where dissidents were housed.

In 1943 and 1944, the government assembled a combat unit of Japanese Americans for the European theater. It became the 442d Regimental Combat Team and gained fame as the most highly decorated of World War II. Their military record bespoke their patriotism.

As the war drew to a close, "internment camps" were slowly evacuated. While some persons of Japanese ancestry returned to their hometowns, others sought new surroundings. For example, the Japanese-American community of Tacoma, WA, had been sent to three different centers; only 30 percent returned to Tacoma after the war. Japanese Americans from Fresno had gone to Manzanar; 80 percent returned to their hometown.

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II sparked constitutional and political debate. During this period, three Japanese-American citizens challenged the constitutionality of the forced relocation and curfew orders through legal actions: Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Mitsuye Endo. Hirabayashi and Korematsu received negative judgments; but Mitsuye Endo, after a lengthy battle through lesser courts, was determined to be "loyal" and allowed to leave the Topaz, Utah, facility.

Justice Murphy of the Supreme Court expressed the following opinion in  Ex parte Mitsuye Endo :

I join in the opinion of the Court, but I am of the view that detention in Relocation Centers of persons of Japanese ancestry regardless of loyalty is not only unauthorized by Congress or the Executive but is another example of the unconstitutional resort to racism inherent in the entire evacuation program. As stated more fully in my dissenting opinion in Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu v. United States , 323 U.S. 214 , 65 S.Ct. 193, racial discrimination of this nature bears no reasonable relation to military necessity and is utterly foreign to the ideals and traditions of the American people.

In 1988, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, Public Law 100-383 – the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 – that acknowledged the injustice of "internment," apologized for it, and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.

One of the most stunning ironies in this episode of denied civil liberties was articulated by an internee who, when told that Japanese Americans were put in those camps for their own protection, countered "If we were put there for our protection, why were the guns at the guard towers pointed inward, instead of outward?"

A note on terminology: The historical primary source documents included on this page reflect the terminology that the government used at the time, such as alien , evacuation , relocation , relocation centers , internment , and Japanese (as opposed to Japanese American ).

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Teaching Japanese-American Internment Using Primary Resources

Rarely seen photos of japanese internment.

View Slide Show ›

By Marjorie Backman and Michael Gonchar

• Dec. 7, 2017

The day after the early-morning surprise assault on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, the United States formally declared war on Japan and entered World War II. Over the next few months, almost 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, over 60 percent of whom were American citizens, were removed from their homes, businesses and farms on the West Coast and forced to live in internment camps. Why? The United States government feared that these individuals, simply because of their ethnicity, posed a national security threat.

More than 40 years later, Congress passed legislation mandating apologies and reparations for violations of the civil liberties and the constitutional rights of those incarcerated during the war. “It’s not for us today to pass judgment upon those who may have made mistakes while engaged in that great struggle,” said President Ronald Reagan, on signing the 1988 legislation. “Yet we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that, a mistake.”

In this lesson, students use original Times reporting and other resources to investigate the forced internment of Japanese-Americans — and track how the government has gradually apologized for some of its actions over the decades. Students will also have the opportunity to look for echoes in today’s world of this difficult chapter in American history.

Arrests, Roundups and Internment

Primary sources: newspaper articles and editorials

Background: Over time, almost 120,000 Japanese-Americans, regardless of whether they were immigrants or had been born in the United States, were evacuated from their homes and brought to temporary assembly centers before being confined to one of several remote internment camps.

Students will square these events with the sobering findings of this 1983 government report : “All this was done despite the fact that not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast.”

Activity: Working in small groups, students should read one or more of these New York Times articles from the time period. Their goal? To figure out what they can find in 1940s news coverage that explains why the American government forced people from their homes into internment camps simply because of their ethnicity, and why the rest of the country let it happen.

Students should look for the following:

• explicit or implied reasons given within the articles to justify the roundups • clues within the writing itself (such as the words used to describe Japanese-Americans, language that reveals bias or an outdated perspective, or sensationalism) that provide insight about contemporary attitudes • the type of sources for the article (for example, does the article rely exclusively on government sources? Does it include any Japanese-American voices?)

Here’s one example to share with the class:

Headline: “ West Coast Widens Martial Law Call ” (PDF) Date: Feb. 12, 1942 Newspaper: The New York Times Explicit reason provided in the article: Raids on Japanese communities yielded large quantities of contraband that “fifth columnists” might find useful. Clues within the writing: The subheadline is startling: “FBI Raids Net 38 Japanese, Guns, Radios, Ammunition and Signal Devices.” It suggests that the Japanese-Americans involved might indeed be guilty of planning an act of treachery. But information at the end of the article explains that the contraband items were seized from a sporting goods store “operated by an alien Japanese.” In this way, even ordinary activities and businesses can appear threatening if they are said to involve Japanese-Americans. Sourcing: Only government sources (including the Los Angeles mayor, the California attorney general and an Army lieutenant general) were provided.

Other Times articles:

Dec. 8, 1941: “ Japanese Seizure Ordered by Biddle ” Dec. 8, 1941: “ West Coast Acts for War Defense ” Jan. 4, 1942: “ Only 2,971 Enemy Aliens Are Held ; Rest of the 1,100,000 Being Watched Here Are Unmolested ” Jan. 29, 1942: “ West Coast Moves to Oust Japanese / Los Angeles ‘Permits’ Nipponese on City Payroll to Take Leaves of Absence ” Feb. 5, 1942: “ California Aliens Face Changed Way / Great Areas of the State to Be Affected by Restrictions or Forced Removals ” Feb. 3, 1942: “ Japanese Seized in Raid on Coast / Federal Agents Arrest 200 or More Aliens in Swoop on Island at Los Angeles ” Feb. 17, 1942: “ Air Bombs Seized in 25 Coast Raids / Japanese Uniforms and Secret Papers Also Taken, 12 Arrests in Sacramento Area ” Dec. 5, 1943: “ Four Japanese Held by FBI in Chicago / Three Had Been Decorated by Tokyo for Activities Here ”

Students can also compare reporting in The Times with accounts and editorials in newspapers on the West Coast, where most Japanese-Americans lived and anti-Japanese hysteria was particularly acute. Is there a noticeable difference in tone? Explain.

West Coast newspapers:

Articles in The San Francisco News (scroll down to find dozens of articles from the spring of 1942) Excerpts from Los Angeles Times editorials (contained within a recent editorial)

Primary Sources: Photographs

Japanese-americans imprisoned, but unbowed, during world war ii.

Background: Dorothea Lange, a photographer best known from her photographs of migrant farmers during the Great Depression, also documented the internment of Japanese-Americans.

Maurice Berger wrote in Lens :

At first glance, Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese-Americans, taken in the early 1940s, appear to show ordinary activities. People wait patiently in lines. Children play. A woman makes artificial flowers. Storefront signs proudly proclaim, “I am an American.” But these quiet images document something sinister: the racially motivated relocation and internment during World War II of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the West Coast, more than 60 percent of whom were American citizens.

Activity: Look at images taken by Ms. Lange in this slide show (at the top of this page) as well as these photos . What do they reveal about the forced evacuation and internment of Japanese-Americans and about life in the camps?

Then imagine you are a museum curator with room for only five images to tell the story of internment. Which five images would you choose from the slide show? For each image, explain why.

Primary Sources: First-Person Video Interviews

A return to the internment camp, in an interview from may, bob fuchigami remembers the amache internment camp in colorado, where he was sent when he was 12 years old..

Background: Bob Fuchigami was sent to the Amache internment camp in Colorado with 10 family members when he was 12 years old. In this video , he returns to the camp at 85 to tell the story of his imprisonment.

And, in another video , Hiroshi Kashiwagi shares his memories of life at the Tule Lake internment camp.

Activity: While students watch one or both of these videos, invite them to consider the following: What can you learn about what internment was like for these people and their families? How did it affect their lives? What is the legacy of internment for them, and the nation, today?

Op-Eds That Connect the Past to the Present

Background: The actor George Takei, who was 5 years old when he and his family began their internment at Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Center in Arkansas, cautions America in his Op-Ed “ Internment, America’s Great Mistake ” to protect American values from “cynically manufactured fear and the deliberate targeting of a vulnerable minority.” He writes:

It has been the lifelong mission of many to ensure we remember the internment. Our oft-repeated plea is simple: We must understand and honor the past in order to learn from and not repeat it. But in the 75 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment of Japanese-Americans, never have we been more anxious that this mission might fail. It is imperative, in today’s toxic political environment, to acknowledge a hard truth: The horror of the internment lay in the racial animus the government itself propagated. It whipped up hatred and fear toward an entire group of people based solely on our ancestry.

And Karen Korematsu, whose father’s struggle against internment ended up being litigated before the Supreme Court , writes in her February 2017 Op-Ed, “ When Lies Overruled Rights ,” that Americans should “come together to reject discrimination based on religion, race or national origin, and to oppose the mass deportation of people who look or pray differently from the majority of Americans.”

Activity: Read these Opinion pieces and consider the arguments being made. Then, write your own Op-Ed using the history of Japanese internment to argue a position on an important issue today. Do you see any echoes of history in today’s current events?

Ideas for Further Research

Research life at the camps using 1940s reporting

Background: Newspaper reporting from the 1940s can provide a window into what life was like at internment camps. Anne O’Hare McCormick, a Times reporter, visited the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. She wrote in a January 1944 article (PDF):

Most of all the settlement looks like an oasis in an endless desert of sand, sage, mesquite and giant cacti. Around the double cluster of barracks that serve as houses, schools, workshops, mess halls, cooperative stores, offices and hospitals are nearly 17,000 acres of vegetable gardens, wheat, alfalfa and rice fields and pasture lands startlingly neat and green in a framework of shallow irrigation ditches.

And a March 1943 Times article reported on white women performing “spartan” duty (PDF), working as teachers, nurses and secretaries at Tule Lake. But The Times did not publish many articles detailing what life was like in the camps.

Providing valuable perspective, by including voices often left out of the history books, are the newspapers published by Japanese-Americans imprisoned in the camps, such as The Heart Mountain Sentinel , The Tulean Dispatch from Tule Lake, The Denson Tribune of the Jerome camp in Arkansas, The Minidoka Irrigator from the Minidoka camp in Idaho and The Manzanar Free Press produced at Manzanar. (After opening each link, scroll down to view the headlines.)

Activity: Compare the reporting in The Times and other mainstream newspapers from 1942 to 1945 with the articles in papers published by Japanese internees. Think about how these on-the-scene reports add to an understanding about life in the internment camps. Consider these questions:

1. What can we learn from reading about life at the camps in newspaper articles published from 1942 to 1945? 2. What are the ways the news stories in the camp newspapers, published by Japanese internees, differ from reporting in The Times and other mainstream newspapers? 3. How can we evaluate the reliability of these various accounts?

Japanese-American soldiers

Background: While thousands were sent to internment camps, American-born Japanese were eventually deemed eligible to serve in World War II and thus prove their loyalty to the United States as well as provide needed troops for its war effort. The 442d Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit comprised only of Japanese-Americans troops, became one of the most highly decorated regiments in U.S. military history, as the Times reported:

The 442d suffered huge casualties; Capt. Daniel K. Inouye, now a United States senator from Hawaii, lost his right arm in battle. The team became famous for its rescue of the Texan “Lost Battalion,” saving more than 200 men who had been surrounded by German troops.

Yet after serving in the Army, many Japanese-American soldiers who returned to America faced discrimination . Senator Daniel Inouye, who died in 2012, recounted for a PBS documentary how after returning from battle in Europe and seeking a haircut while in uniform, he was told, “We don’t cut Jap hair.”

In 2000 President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to 22 Asian-Americans; 20 were Japanese-Americans . When George T. Sakato died in 2015, he was the last to die of seven Japan-Americans who had lived to receive this honor. In 2011 Congress granted several Japanese-American veterans Congressional Gold Medals .

Activity: Consider whether serving in the military would have been easy or hard to do when the rest of your family was kept in an internment camp. Then write a frank one-page letter home to your family as a Japanese-American soldier.

Legal challenges to the camps

Background: After Fred T. Korematsu in 1942 defied his military evacuation order, the American Civil Liberties Union branch in Northern California took up his case . But he lost his appeal and the Supreme Court ruled against him in 1944. Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui also separately defied their curfew orders and refused to report for internment, resulting in legal challenges that the Supreme Court rejected.

The 1942 legal challenge by Mitsuye Endo (PDF) that also landed in the Supreme Court is credited by some as leading to President Roosevelt’s 1944 suspension of Executive Order 9066 , as a law professor detailed a 2016 Sacramento Bee opinion piece.

In 1981, after the historian Peter Irons requested legal documents from Fred Korematsu’s 1940s Supreme Court case, he found a memo indicating that “a government lawyer had accused the solicitor general of lying to the Supreme Court about the danger posed by Japanese-Americans.” Mr. Irons convinced Mr. Korematsu to challenge the ruling. Karen Korematsu, Mr. Korematsu’s daughter, later wrote in The Times :

Evidence was discovered proving that the wartime government suppressed, altered and destroyed material evidence while arguing my father’s, Yasui’s and Hirabayashi’s cases before the Supreme Court. The government’s claims that people of Japanese descent had engaged in espionage and that mass incarceration was necessary to protect the country were not only false, but had even been refuted by the government’s own agencies, including the Office of Naval Intelligence, the F.B.I. and the Federal Communications Commission.

In 1983 a judge overturned Mr. Korematsu’s conviction , “based on newly obtained information revealing that the government had knowingly exaggerated the threat of sabotage and espionage posed by ethnic Japanese on the West Coast.” And in 1998, President Clinton gave Mr. Korematsu the Medal of Freedom .

Activity: Choose any of these court cases related to Japanese internment to research further. What is the background of the case? What were the legal issues involved? What did the court decide? What is the significance of that decision?

Investigating the camps and reparations

Background: In the 1980s Congress initiated an investigation of the internment camps. The hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, some 40 years after the war, produced a report in 1983, concluding that the relocation and internment of Japanese-American citizens and resident aliens in World War II amounted to a “grave injustice.” Five years later, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 , which granted reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been interned by the United States government during the war.

To locate potential recipients of the reparations, the Justice Department created the Office of Redress Administration; but the process of tracking down eligible people was laborious and time-consuming , and former internees were dying . In September 1989 the Senate tried to speed up the process , yet more wrangling resulted, with the checks not to be sent until funds were made available in late in 1990 . By 1992, only 50,000 people had been paid.

Activity: Students should read about the conclusions of the 1983 report and discuss the following: What are the most striking points? Did Congress and the president make the right decision in issuing apologies and paying reparations?

Now imagine having President Roosevelt’s ear at a reception in 1942 for 10 minutes. What should he be told about the role that Japanese internment camps have played in American history?

Remembering the camps

Seeking Answers at Tule Lake Internment Camp

Background: In 2006 Congress sent President George W. Bush legislation (which he signed ) to preserve the internment camps . Two camps are now National Park Service sites: the Manzanar National Historic Site and the Minidoka Internment National Monument (created by President Clinton’s 2001 order ).

Activity: Students can do this exercise on their own: Consider whether an internment camp would be the type of place you’d like to visit and list your reasons. Whatever your response, do research online about a camp and in your own words create a one-page summary of a tour that could be given there. Or create a museum gallery for the historic site.

Alternately, write an Op-Ed about whether more or less should be done to preserve these sites for the future.

Invoking the internment example

Background: It’s possible to find echoes of the Japanese internment controversy in national security debates at other moments of United States history since World War II. Even though the official government attitude toward Japanese internment gradually changed, not all Americans are in agreement. Explore the following recent incidents when political leaders and activists raised the Japanese internment experience as a chapter to repeat or to avoid:

1. The aftermath of 9/11: After the Sept. 11 attacks, Japanese-Americans voiced concern about bigotry against American Muslims and Sikhs. In 2004, an advisory panel criticized the Census Bureau’s move to give the Department of Homeland Security data that identified populations of Arab-Americans; critics compared the bureau’s 21st-century actions to its World War II activities locating Japanese-American communities. (A 2000 Times article highlighted research concluding that the Census Bureau, despite its denials, had indeed been highly involved in the roundup and internment of Japanese-Americans.)

In 2007 Holly Yasui filed a legal brief to aid Muslim immigrants who sought to overturn a Brooklyn judge’s ruling allowing for the detention of noncitizens; Ms. Yasui’s father, Minoru Yasui, had once challenged a Supreme Court ruling on World War II restrictions.

2. Refugees from Syria’s civil war: In November 2015, a Roanoke, Va., mayor caused a firestorm, explaining his opposition to welcoming Syrian refugees to the U.S., saying the internment of Japanese-Americans had been justified . Then he recanted. For some former Japanese internees, the debate over Syria’s refugees has evoked painful memories .

3. Restrictions on immigration by Muslims: On Dec. 9, 2015, The Times reported on an MSNBC interview of Donald J. Trump, then a presidential candidate:

Mr. Trump cited Roosevelt’s classification of thousands of Japanese, Germans and Italians living in the United States during the war as “enemy aliens.” He said he was not endorsing something as drastic as the camps where American citizens of Japanese descent were interned. Instead, he referred to three proclamations by which Roosevelt authorized government detention of immigrants, and which led to the internment of thousands of noncitizen Japanese, Germans and Italians.

A few days later Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s granddaughter roundly rejected Mr. Trump’s ideas, as did Representative Doris Matsui , who had been interned in a camp. A 16-year-old student wrote a contest-winning essay for The Learning Network connecting the internment of ethnic Japanese with excluding Muslims from immigrating to America.

Shortly after his election in November 2016, Mr. Trump reaffirmed his intention to restrict immigration by Muslims. A Trump supporter, Carl Higbie , evoked the “precedent” of the Japanese internment camps in citing the need to prevent homeland terrorism in a Fox News appearance.

Promptly following his inauguration, President Trump issued a series of executive orders to limit immigration or travel to the United States by people from seven countries with largely Muslim populations. Legal challenges followed, but in September Mr. Trump responded by imposing a more sweeping ban ; a judge halted it in October. Earlier this week the Supreme Court permitted the travel ban to go forward even while legal challenges continue.

Activity: Students can select one of the above examples from the past two decades when political leaders or activists have invoked the legacy of the Japanese internment and determine the following: What are the relevant lessons from the Japanese internment experience that should inform this situation? Explain.

Additional Resources

Digital Public Library of America | Teaching Guide: Exploring Japanese American Internment During World War II and Japanese American Internment During World War II Primary Source Set

Densho | Teaching WWII Japanese American Incarceration With Primary Sources

Digital History | Explorations: Japanese-American Internment FDR Presidential Library and Museum | Japanese American Internment

American Incarceration

A Smithsonian magazine special report

The Injustice of Japanese-American Internment Camps Resonates Strongly to This Day

During WWII, 120,000 Japanese-Americans were forced into camps, a government action that still haunts victims and their descendants

T.A. Frail; Photographs by Paul Kitagaki Jr.; Historical Photographs by Dorothea Lange

Jane Yanagi Diamond taught American History at a California high school, “but I couldn’t talk about the internment,” she says. “My voice would get all strange.” Born in Hayward, California, in 1939, she spent most of World War II interned with her family at a camp in Utah.

Seventy-five years after the fact, the federal government’s incarceration of some 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during that war is seen as a shameful aberration in the U.S. victory over militarism and totalitarian regimes. Though President Ford issued a formal apology to the internees in 1976, saying their incarceration was a “setback to fundamental American principles,” and Congress authorized the payment of reparations in 1988, the episode remains, for many, a living memory. Now, with immigration-reform proposals targeting entire groups as suspect, it resonates as a painful historical lesson.

The roundups began quietly within 48 hours after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. The announced purpose was to protect the West Coast. Significantly, the incarceration program got underway despite a warning; in January 1942, a naval intelligence officer in Los Angeles reported that Japanese-Americans were being perceived as a threat almost entirely “because of the physical characteristics of the people.” Fewer than 3 percent of them might be inclined toward sabotage or spying, he wrote, and the Navy and the FBI already knew who most of those individuals were. Still, the government took the position summed up by John DeWitt, the Army general in command of the coast: “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not.”

That February, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, empowering DeWitt to issue orders emptying parts of California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona of issei—immigrants from Japan, who were precluded from U.S. citizenship by law—and nisei, their children, who were U.S. citizens by birth. Photographers for the War Relocation Authority were on hand as they were forced to leave their houses, shops, farms, fishing boats. For months they stayed at “assembly centers,” living in racetrack barns or on fairgrounds. Then they were shipped to ten “relocation centers,” primitive camps built in the remote landscapes of the interior West and Arkansas. The regime was penal: armed guards, barbed wire, roll call. Years later, internees would recollect the cold, the heat, the wind, the dust—and the isolation.

There was no wholesale incarceration of U.S. residents who traced their ancestry to Germany or Italy, America’s other enemies.

The exclusion orders were rescinded in December 1944, after the tides of battle had turned in the Allies’ favor and just as the Supreme Court ruled that such orders were permissible in wartime (with three justices dissenting, bitterly). By then the Army was enlisting nisei soldiers to fight in Africa and Europe. After the war, President Harry Truman told the much-decorated, all-nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team: “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice—and you have won.”

If only: Japanese-Americans met waves of hostility as they tried to resume their former lives. Many found that their properties had been seized for nonpayment of taxes or otherwise appropriated. As they started over, they covered their sense of loss and betrayal with the Japanese phrase Shikata ga nai —It can’t be helped. It was decades before nisei parents could talk to their postwar children about the camps.

Paul Kitagaki Jr., a photojournalist who is the son and grandson of internees, has been working through that reticence since 2005. At the National Archives in Washington, D.C., he has pored over more than 900 pictures taken by War Relocation Authority photographers and others—including one of his father’s family at a relocation center in Oakland, California, by one of his professional heroes, Dorothea Lange. From fragmentary captions he has identified more than 50 of the subjects and persuaded them and their descendants to sit for his camera in settings related to their internment. His pictures here, published for the first time, read as portraits of resilience.

Jane Yanagi Diamond, now 77 and retired in Carmel, California, is living proof. “I think I’m able to talk better about it now,” she told Kitagaki. “I learned this as a kid—you just can’t keep yourself in gloom and doom and feel sorry for yourself. You’ve just got to get up and move along. I think that’s what the war taught me.”

Subject interviews conducted by Paul Kitagaki Jr.

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T.A. Frail | READ MORE

Tom Frail is a senior editor for Smithsonian magazine. He previously worked as a senior editor for the Washington Post and for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

Paul Kitagaki Jr. | READ MORE

Paul Kitagaki Jr. is a senior photographer at The Sacramento Bee . His work has won numerous awards, including a shared Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

Skip to Main Content of WWII

Japanese american incarceration.

At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, about 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived on the US mainland, mostly along the Pacific Coast. About two thirds were full citizens, born and raised in the United States. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, however, a wave of antiJapanese suspicion and fear led the Roosevelt administration to adopt a drastic policy toward these residents, alien and citizen alike. 

Top Image: Library of Congress, LC-A351-T01-3-M-26.

At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, about 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived on the US mainland, mostly along the Pacific Coast. About two thirds were full citizens, born and raised in the United States. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, however, a wave of antiJapanese suspicion and fear led the Roosevelt administration to adopt a drastic policy toward these residents, alien and citizen alike. Virtually all Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes and property and live in camps for most of the war. The government cited national security as justification for this policy although it violated many of the most essential constitutional rights of Japanese Americans.

Both the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been conducting surveillance on Japanese Americans since the 1930s. After the Pearl Harbor attack, these two agencies, plus the Army’s G-2 intelligence unit, arrested over 3,000 suspected subversives, half of whom were of Japanese descent. As far as the agencies were concerned, the remaining Japanese American population did not pose a significant threat to national security.

The public, however, was not convinced. Japanese victories in Guam, Malaya, and the Philippines helped fuel anti-Japanese-American hysteria, as did a January 1942 report claiming that Japanese Americans had given vital information to the Japanese government ahead of the Pearl Harbor attack. Many Pacific Coast citizens worried that local Japanese Americans might help the Japanese military launch attacks in their region. Walter Lippmann, a journalist whose columns were carried by newspapers across the United States, argued that the only reason Japanese Americans had not yet been caught plotting an act of sabotage was that they were waiting to strike when it would be most effective. Another influential columnist, Westbrook Pegler, put it more bluntly: “The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.”

Despite the growing public pressure to act, government officials were uneasy about  incarcerating Japanese Americans, especially those who were citizens, without a clear reason. Neither Attorney General Francis Biddle nor Secretary of War Henry Stimson believed the removal would be wise or even legal. Military leaders, however, as high up as Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, insisted that this policy was absolutely necessary to ensure public safety on the Pacific Coast. Between the public demand for action and pressure from the military, Biddle buckled and told Stimson he would not object to a wholesale removal of Japanese Americans from the region. Stimson advised Roosevelt accordingly, and on February 19, 1942, the President signed Executive Order 9066, which directed the War Department to create “military areas” that anyone could be excluded from for essentially any reason.

The new order gave the military the authority it needed to remove individuals of Japanese descent from the Pacific Coast, but where would they go? Federal officials hoped that these individuals might be able to find work as farm laborers, but many state and local authorities made it clear they did not want Japanese Americans moving into their areas. The governors of Montana and Wyoming feared it would spark racial violence. “Our people cannot tell an American-born Japanese from an alien,” said Montana Governor Sam C. Ford. “When casualty lists start coming in…I fear for the safety of any Japanese in this state.” Idaho’s Attorney General, Bert Miller, was less sympathetic. “We want to keep this a white man’s country,” he said. “All Japanese [should] be put in concentration camps for the remainder of the war.”

Japanese Americans arriving at an assembly center near Stockton, California. Their possessions are piled outside awaiting inspection before being transferred to the barracks (1942). (Image: National Archives and Records Administration, 210-G-C404.)

In the end, the newly created War Relocation Authority did move Japanese evacuees into a series of “relocation centers” for most of the rest of the war. Families were given only a few days to dispose of their property and report to temporary “assembly centers,” where they were held until the larger relocation centers were ready to receive them. Living conditions in these makeshift camps were terrible. One assembly center established at Santa Anita Park, a racetrack in southern California, housed entire families in horse stalls with dirt floors.

The more permanent relocation centers were not much better. The War Relocation Authority established 10 of these camps, mostly located in the West, although two were located in Arkansas (which later consolidated to one in Rohwer, Arkansas). The Army-style barracks built to house the evacuees offered little protection from the intense heat and cold, and families were often forced to live together, offering little privacy. The residents were not required to work, but the guard towers and barbed-wire fences surrounding the camps denied them the freedom to move about as they pleased.

Despite these conditions, the incarcerated Japanese Americans did what they could to make the camps feel as much like home as possible. They established newspapers, markets, schools, and even police and fire departments. At the Rohwer War Relocation Center in southeastern Arkansas, Japanese American high school students had their own band, sports teams, clubs, and activities like senior prom and student council. Flipping through the pages of the school’s yearbook, however, the makeshift barracks of wood and tar paper, the guard towers, and the barbed-wire fences visible in the photos are an obvious reminder that the experiences of these students were anything but normal. In 1943, the War Relocation Authority subjected all Japanese Americans in the camps to a loyalty test, in which they were asked to reject allegiance to the Japanese emperor and assert whether they were willing to serve in the US military. Many of the camp residents, especially those who were American citizens, were deeply offended by the government’s obvious suspicion that they might still be loyal to Japan. About 8,500 of these people, mainly second-generation Japanese American men, answered “no” to both questions, often in protest. All of these so-called “no-no” residents were labeled as disloyal, were separated from their families, and were sent to the relocation center at Tule Lake, California.

Segregating the so-called “disloyal” Japanese Americans from the “loyal” ones only made the relocation program even harder to justify. If the government had taken steps to identify and remove the “disloyal” Japanese Americans, why was there a need for any of the others to remain in the camps? Washington officials like Attorney General Biddle and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes urged President Roosevelt to end the relocation program as soon as possible, while several of the camp residents themselves challenged the program in court. Roosevelt hesitated, fearing a political backlash, but in December 1944 his administration declared the period of “military necessity” for relocation over, and officials began allowing Japanese Americans back into the Pacific Coast region.

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The Japanese American relocation program had significant consequences. Camp residents lost some $400 million in property during their incarceration . Congress provided $38 million in reparations in 1948 and forty years later paid an additional $20,000 to each surviving individual who had been detained in the camps. The Japanese American community itself was also transformed by this experience. Before the war, most Japanese Americans adhered closely to the customs and traditions enforced by their oldest generation (called Issei), which often deepened their isolation from mainstream American society. The experience of living in the camps largely ended this pattern for second-generation Japanese Americans (called Nisei), who after the war became some of the best-educated and most successful members of their communities.

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Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII Essay

Introduction, japanese american internment and the democracy of america during ww2, historical dynamics that allowed for japanese americans internment, impact of internment on the japanese americans during and after the ww2, works cited.

During the WW II in America, the government of America forced more than 120, 000 Americans of Japanese descent from the regions of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona to relocation centers where they lived for the entire period of the WW II. Since the internment process involved all ages among the Japanese American population, the general process of relocation was done by the humane War Relocation Authority (WRA), which spread the Japanese Americans in the relocation centers and US Army facilities. Although all the internees were released by the windfall of 1946, they had lost their businesses, homes besides deleterious effects on their social lives. Thus, this analytical treatise attempts to explicitly review the infamous Japanese Americans internment and what it suggests on the nature of American democracy. Besides, the treatise reviews the historical dynamics that allowed for the internment of Japanese Americans and the impacts of internment in the Japanese American communities during and after the end of WW II.

Basically, the Japanese American communities’ internment during WW2 was justified by the American government that classified it as a military necessity. The period was characterized by an indiscriminate roundup of Japanese and Japanese Americans who lived in the states considered a security threat since the main foes of the then America was Japan. Several instances of constitution abuse occurred in the disguise of national security. The American Japanese were forced and actually moved to relocation centers against their will despite the clear human rights clauses in the American constitution that protect the basic human rights of all American citizens irrespective of their descent (Starr, 14).

Though the fallacy of security concerns applied by the government seemed justifiable on the basis of generalization of threat, the decision lacked any concrete premise for the actions taken. Before relocation, there had never been any serious security threat reported as committed by the Japanese Americans. Despite being in the bracket of taxpayers and citizens of American, the democratic space of freedom of association and participation, the civic duties as citizens of America were denied since this group was subjected to unjustified detainment against the constitution of the United States of America through the ‘Executive Order 9066’ authorized by the then president Roosevelt (Executive Order 9066, par.13).

Interestingly, the internment policy was proven unjustified by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians that was later appointed by President Carter to find out if the government did overstep its mandate in targeting a single ancestry. Basically, the internment policy lacked objectiveness since the process only targeted one part of the nation and left other Japanese Americans living in other parts of America. The government has never been in a position to prove substantial incidences of disloyalty by the Japanese Americans who were subjected to internment (Connell, 71).

Despite the fact that the American government adopted humane strategy for relocation, the reasons for the same were never clearly communicated to the Japanese Americans despite claims full democracy and right to timely information on the reasons for actions before actualization. Besides, those rounded were never offered any form of compensation but were denied the opportunity to continue building the nation, which is the foundation of American democracy (Dye, 19).

For instance, in the Manzanar relocation center was lacking several basic human survival facilities despite hosting Japanese Americans of different ages. It would take unnecessary longer hours to access medical facilities and other basic social services for the internees who had a unique culture. Supposedly a totalitarian democracy, the internees were denied their freedom of association and access to social services on the basis of a biased internment policy targeting a single descent. It was only the Japanese descent which was targeted though the US had other foes like the Germans (Connell, 29).

The unfair treatment of this descent was a direct defilement on democracy, and the human rights principles enshrined in the constitution of the United States of America. Reflecting on the internment policy adopted by the government of America on the Japanese American communities, it is factual that the totalitarian democracy regime was defiled by policymakers and social decision-makers. Through internment, the basic roles played by the Japanese Americans were grounded and suspended without their consent despite having been part of the taxpayers (Houston, Jeanne, and James, 32).

The relocation centers were never designed in line with the unique culture and ways of life of the Japanese American internees. For instance, unlike in their former homes, the Japanese American internees did not have an opportunity to incorporate building architecture they had previously enjoyed and used to maintain a unique identity. Thus, the status of democracy in America in the period of WW2 can be described discriminatory based on unjustified biasness on the American citizens of Japanese origin (Hanel, 14). The government was unjustified to adopt internment policy on the Japanese Americans on the basis of national security threat since communal punishment does not serve the purpose of containing a situation. Rather, it only serves to expose the ills of a government supposedly democratic.

Several historical dynamics played against the Japanese Americans living in the regions of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona before the internment policy. Following the infamous Pearl Harbor attack by the Imperial Japan in 1941, the government felt threatened by the action of the Japanese and had to develop a policy to quickly prevent possible reoccurrence of the same.

Political dynamics: Following the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan in 1941, the political and military leadership of America felt threatened and developed a fear that the then relatively powerful Imperial Japan was strategizing for a combat showdown on the strategic West Coast regions of the United States. Before this attack, the Imperial Japan had enjoyed military conquest described by historians as very rapid since they had full control of major counties in Asia besides the Pacific by 1936. The reports reaching the political class in America was unbearable and some viewed Japan as unstoppable. As a result of this fear, the military and political classes were unsure of ethic Japanese loyalty in the face of an eminent threat to survival of the US. This fear was compounded by the ‘Niihau Incident’ when a captured naval airman of the Japanese regiment was forcefully released by three American Japanese civilians on the Niihau Island (Malkin, 22).

Social dynamics: The loyalty concerns by the political class in America on the Japanese American descent was fueled by the then common racial prejudice and the Nihau incident. For instance, the ‘A Jap’s a Jap’ racial slang propaganda made the Japanese Americans an easy target in the face of a possible attack by the relatively powerful Imperial Japan (Houston, Jeanne and James, 32). Due to the Nihau incident, the then internment program administrator seemed justified before the congress when he revealed his sentiment that;

I don’t want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty… It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty… But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map (Mullen, Par. 5).

Economic Dynamics : The Imperial Japan had gained economically from the series of successful military campaigns in Asia and the Pacific. Due to fear of possible destruction of the economic system of the strategic West Coast region, the leadership of America developed a rationale that interment of the Japanese Americans in these regions would give them a better chance of fighting an invading Japanese Army before they mingle with the Japanese Americans. Had the Imperial Japan army attacked the West Coast region, it would have been difficult for the government to identify the attacked since Japanese poses more or less same physic.

Economic impacts : As a result of the internment policy, the Japanese Americans directly lost their business valued at five billion dollars. The five years of internment grounded all their business activities and their businesses collapsed. The Japanese Americans lost their means of livelihood. Besides, this group lost their homes and investments in constructing these homes. Upon release, most their business have been destroyed, as was the case with their homes. The meager compensation of twenty thousand dollars for each of the survivors cannot be equated to five years of internment and lost property. The Japanese American community dominance of the West Coast region was completed destroyed.

Social impacts: During the interment process, the Japanese Americans lost their religious powers which could only be fully exercised in accordance with the deities and beliefs endorsed in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their unique culture. These fundamental ideas from the Japanese American religious culture were then misinterpreted into social conception of prejudice that resulted in abuse of their basic human rights. The supposedly democratic government which was mandated with the responsibility of protecting its citizens neglected its group (Burton Farrell and Lord, 7).

The Japanese American conscientious citizenship was compromised by biasness that victimized this group during their period of internment. They lost their social identity, traditional way of life, and communal existence. Though, the government of the US had offered apology for the biased internment of the Japanese Americans, the prejudice has remained among the other Americans as evidenced in the minimal political leadership roles played by Japanese Americans at present (Daniels, 34).

The infamous Japanese American community interment during the Second World War in the West Coast regions of America defiled the totalitarian democratic regime of the US. Besides, the process was the state constitution on basic rights of American citizens to free associations, participation in public service, and right of protection by the government against human rights violation. However, the Niihau incident and attack on Pearl Harbor provided the then political and military classes the rationale for internment of the Japanese Americans. As a result of internment, the Japanese Americans lost their dignity, private property, and freedom of association.

Burton, John, Farrell Michael and Lord Randy. Confinement and Ethnicity: Sites of shame . Web.

Connell, Thomas. America’s Japanese Hostages: The World War II Plan for a Japanese Free Latin America . Alabama: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. Print.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II . New York: Hill & Wang, 1993. Print.

Dye, Bob. How bigots ‘cleansed’ Legislature in 1942 . Chicago: The Honolulu Advertiser, 2001. Print.

Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation , 1942. Web.

Hanel, Rachael. The Japanese American Internment . New York: Hill & Wang, 2008. Print.

Houston, Michael, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James Diana Houston. Farewell to Manzanar . New York: Random House, Inc. 2007. Print.

Malkin, Michelle. In Defense of Internment . New York: Hill & Wang, 2004. Print.

Mullen, Fred. DeWitt Attitude on Japs Upsets Plans: Watsonville Register-Pajaronian . New York: Santa Cruiz Library, 1943. Print.

Starr, Kevin. California: A History . New York: The Modern Library. 2007. Print.

• Rights of Prisoners of War in the Geneva Convention
• Comparative Histories of Internment
• Manzanar & Japanese American Internment
• China and Japan Relationship
• Effects on Racial Minorities and Women in the USA
• World War II in Eurasia and America
• Why Did the Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor?
• The Life of a Freedom Fighter in Post WWII Palestine
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 22). Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/

"Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." IvyPanda , 22 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII'. 22 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." May 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

1. IvyPanda . "Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." May 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Japanese Americans Internment During the WWII." May 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/japanese-americans-internment-during-the-wwii/.

Home — Essay Samples — History — American History — Japanese Internment Camps: Tragedy and Injustice

Japanese Internment Camps: Tragedy and Injustice

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Published: Sep 1, 2023

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Historical context: fear and paranoia, experiences in internment camps: resilience amid adversity, enduring impact on communities: seeking justice, lessons for the present and future, conclusion: remembering the past, shaping a just future.

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Photo Essay: Japanese Canadian Internment Field School 

September 11, 2023

In this photo essay, Densho’s communications and public engagement director Natasha Varner shares images and some of what she learned during a two-week immersive learning experience about Japanese Canadian internment history this past summer. The field school included a bus tour through interior British Columbia hosted by the Nikkei National Museum and then a seminar at University of Victoria through the Past Wrongs, Future Choices program. This is just the start of what we hope will be more Densho offerings about the Japanese Canadian internment* experience in coming years.

Much like in the US, Japanese Canadian internment didn’t materialize overnight. It was the culmination of decades of anti-Asian racism that included everything from discriminatory laws to violent mob attacks, most notably Vancouver’s 1907 “race riot.” Although both Issei and Nisei were denied the right to vote in Canada, many had become naturalized British subjects so that by the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks, three quarters of the Nikkei population was either naturalized or native-born Canadians. But that status did not protect them from egregious acts of state violence.

After Pearl Harbor and a December 1941 Japanese attack on British territory in Hong Kong, Canada’s federal cabinet used the War Measures Act of 1914 to enact a series of policies, many of which were inspired by BC politicians under the leadership of Ian Alistair Mackenzie, an open white supremacist and anti-Japanese cabinet minister from British Columbia. As long as the War Measures Act was in effect, the drastic measures could not be legally challenged. 

Caption: Hastings Park, where some 8,000 Japanese Canadians were packed into converted fairground buildings and forced to live in squalor for months on end while they awaited longer term placement. Oral history accounts often mention the terrible noise and smell, and complete lack of privacy. Historic photo shows the interior of the men’s dormitory, courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum Alex Eastwood Collection 1994.69.3.18 . Contemporary photo taken outside the old livestock building where women and children were temporarily forced to live in unsanitary conditions.

Caption: Confiscated fishing boats in the once-thriving Japanese Canadian fishing village of Steveston, at the mouth of the Fraser River. The boats were stored so haphazardly that many sustained serious damage and were either destroyed entirely or sold off at a fraction of their value. Image of impounded fishing vessels courtesy of Nikkei National Museum Kishizo Kimura Collection 2010-4-2-1-11a .

Beginning in January 1942, Nikkei men within a 100-mile radius of the coast of British Columbia between the ages of 18 and 45 were rounded up and sent to forced labor camps – euphemistically called “road camps” – where they had to engage in grueling highway construction. BC politicians – particularly Ian Mackenzie – didn’t stop there. They continued to advocate for the removal of all Japanese Canadians and on February 26, 1942 their vision came to pass in the form of an Executive Order closely modeled off of EO9066 . 

Within a matter of weeks, the forced removal of all Nikkei residents of British Columbia began. Japanese Canadian women, children, and the men who had not already been forced into labor camps were given as little as 24 hours notice to pack their belongings and leave their homes. Many were then forced to live in overcrowded squalor in a massive fairgrounds-turned-detention facility – Hastings Park – in Vancouver. 

They were then funneled to different types of camps depending on their circumstances: Around 12,000 were sent to internment camps in interior BC, many of which were situated in repurposed ghost towns or on lands leased from farmers. Some families were able to reunite by “volunteering” to work on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba. And those with enough savings on hand and the right connections were permitted to establish “self-supporting” camps or relocate to live with family in eastern Canada. 

Their trials didn’t end there. Beginning in 1943, Japanese Canadians were systematically dispossessed of their property by the Canadian government. Homes, farms, businesses, and other possessions were sold – often at a fraction of their value. The funds were then placed in government-managed accounts and doled out in tightly restricted monthly stipends which internees had to use to pay for basic necessities in the camps. This scheme – which Ian Mackenzie also masterminded and advocated for – served to deter Japanese Canadians from ever returning to the West Coast and provided jobs and housing for white Canadians, particularly veterans. As Masumi Izumi writes in the Densho Encyclopedia , “The Canadian government systematically deprived Japanese Canadians of their property, and effectively made them pay for their own incarceration.” 

Caption: Tashme, the largest and most isolated of the camps in what’s now called Sunshine Valley. Now a small museum and the Tashme Historical Project is housed in what was once the butcher shop and an 80-year old gobo plant grows outside a replica barrack. Historic photo of Tashme courtesy of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre . Contemporary photos show Tashme museum founder and curator Ryan Ellan giving a tour of the site to bus tour participants and a sign that marks the entrance to Sunshine Valley, the former site of the Tashme Internment Camp.

Caption: Fellow members of the bus tour listen to a talk at the Nikkei Legacy Park in Greenwood, BC. Greenwood was an abandoned copper mining town in 1942. Catholic clergy welcomed many fishing families from Steveston who were trying to keep their families intact and provided education to the children for the duration of the war. Many Japanese Canadians stayed in Greenwood after the war, helping to reverse the economic and social decline that had preceded their arrival.  

Caption: There are no visible remains of Lemon Creek, which was once the second largest of the camps with a population of 1,851. Lemon Creek was one of four detention sites in the Slocan Extension, where the BC government leased pastures and farmlands on which Japanese Canadians were made to build their own shacks and cities to sustain them. Historic photo of Tsusano Baba and Jack Baba seated on a garden fence at Lemon Creek; courtesy of Nikkei National Museum Frank Baba Collection 2013.9.1.2 . Contemporary photo of a fellow bus tour participant walking what was once a railway that ran along the perimeter of the camp.   

Caption: Some 1,500 Japanese Canadians lived in New Denver, where an impressive interpretive center, surviving barracks, and historic artifacts donated by the families that once lived here help make the history of what was once here feel more tangible. Our guide at the museum, Ruby, talked about why Japanese Canadians continued living in New Denver long after the war: “They stayed and they stayed and they stayed until 1957,” she said, “because they had nowhere else to go and because they had each other.” Photos show barracks and artifacts from the camp at the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre .

Caption: Sandon is nicknamed the “Sunless City.” It’s a mostly abandoned ghost town situated in a narrow valley between two steep mountains prone to rockslides and cloaked in damp gloom even at the height of summer. During the war, its population swelled from 20 to nearly 1,000 mostly elderly Japanese Canadians who renovated and rebuilt buildings that had been abandoned after the town’s 19 th century silver mining boom had ended. Historic photo shows children posing in front of a building in Sandon, BC. The teacher in the top right corner is Lillian Nishikawa; she taught Sunday school and played the piano at the Buddhist church, courtesy of Nikkei National Museum and the Sakamoto Family Collection, ​​1993.34.9.a-c . Contemporary photos show a building in present-day Sandon and a row of salvaged Vancouver trolley buses now being stored in the town.

Caption: Kaslo, another ghost town camp where nearly 1,000 Japanese Canadians lived during WWII. The only Japanese Canadian newspaper that was allowed to be published during the war, The New Canadian, was published out of Kaslo. The offices and printing press were housed in what is now a natural foods store. Around 80 Japanese Canadians lived in The Langham, pictured here, during WWII. The building later fell into disrepair but now houses a small museum and performance space. Historic photo shows a steamer docked at a pier on Kootenay Lake with Japanese Canadian men, women and children walking off at Kaslo, courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum Kumano Family Collection , 2011.19.15 . Contemporary photo shows bus tour participants outside the present-day Langham Cultural Centre and museum.

Caption: East Lillooet was a “self-supporting” camp built in the hot and arid lowlands along the Fraser River. Around 55 families who had enough resources to fully support themselves lived in tar paper shacks here for the duration of the war and into the late 1940s. In this picture, a bus tour member points to where her family’s home once stood. Her sister was also on the tour and I was able to get to know her over several hours of sitting on the bus together. She had also just suffered the loss of her husband – this was the first trip she’d taken without him, and her first time returning to East Lillooett since being born there in 1947. She later told me that she wanted to share more with the group, but that “the emotions just get too piled up.”

In December 1944, the Canadian government made all internees fill out a repatriation form. Like the highly divisive and misguided “loyalty questionnaire” in the US, this form was both confusingly worded and immensely consequential. It presented Japanese Canadians with two undesirable options aimed at ensuring their permanent removal from the West Coast: immediate relocation to east of the Rockies or postwar “repatriation” to Japan (in reality, this was a deportation to a foreign, war-ravaged land for most respondents). 

The anguishing decisions about how to respond to this form were made under such extreme duress that they can barely be called decisions at all. And yet they had immediate and long-lasting consequences for the lives of Japanese Canadians. Many of the 10,000 who had chosen “repatriation” attempted to revoke their repatriation applications when Japan surrendered in August 1945. They were at first denied and then, under mounting public pressure, permitted to maintain their Canadian citizenship. 

Ultimately around 4,000 Japanese Canadians were deported and stripped of their citizenship under this system. Thousands of others were “dispersed” East of the Rockies in a deliberate attempt to prevent their return to the West Coast and to isolate Japanese Canadians from their communities. This is known colloquially as the “second uprooting.” The exclusion orders were finally lifted in 1949, but the impacts of years of uprootings, dispossession, deportation, and dispersal left lasting wounds. The 1970s saw a cultural resurgence and a redress movement much like that in the US . A month after the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed a redress bill that included a formal apology as well as $21,000 to survivors, recovery of Canadian citizenship to those who had been deported, and educational funds. 

These are just the broad strokes of a long and complicated history. Within this overview are thousands of stories of heartbreak, of hopelessness, of resilience, and of resistance. I hope to take all that I learned during my time in BC to help bring some of those stories to Densho’s audiences, but I want to do this with extreme sensitivity to ongoing conversations among Japanese Canadians about who is telling this story and how it is told.

As I reflect back on the bus tour and look ahead to the role that Densho might play in sharing this story, I’m humbled and enormously grateful to the community of people I was able to learn from and alongside during the field school. At times, I’ve found myself comparing what I know of Japanese American incarceration history to what I learned on this trip but ultimately I think that’s an impossible calculation – the Japanese Canadian wartime experience wasn’t better or worse than the Japanese American experience, it was simply different. Both constituted large scale violations of human rights and, as with other dark parts of our history, the question we ask shouldn’t be who had it worse, but rather: what responsibility do we all have in making sure that nothing like this ever happens again?

Text and photos by Natasha Varner, Densho Communications and Public Engagement Director

 *Terminology note: “internment” is still dominantly used in Canada, so I’m using that here even though Densho’s preferred terminology is “incarceration.”

Sources and further reading:  

Karizumai: A Guide to Japanese Canadian Internment Sites by Linda Kawamoto Reid and Beth Carter

Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre

The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians During the Second World War by Ann Gomer Sunahara

Past Wrongs, Future Choices

[Header image: Tents where Japanese Canadians were housed in Slocan, BC. Courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum 1992.11.1.a-c .]

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