World War II Day by Day

Washington, D.C. • February 19, 1942

Eighty-four years ago on this date in 1942, cele­brated today as the Day of Remem­brance, Presi­dent Franklin D. Roose­velt signed Execu­tive Order 9066. It autho­rized the War Depart­ment to desig­nate “mili­tary areas” in the U.S. and admit, exclude, or remove from these areas any­one whom the depart­ment felt to be a danger to the security of the nation. The next month Roose­velt signed an Act of Congress that made any viola­tion of man­dates issued under his execu­tive order (e.g., public procla­ma­tions issued by senior mili­tary author­i­ties) a federal crime. Although the unprec­e­dented order appeared care­fully neu­tral, Execu­tive Order 9066 ulti­mately led to the tragic exile and incar­cer­ation of over 120,000 per­sons of Japa­nese ancestry, citizens and noncitizens alike, living along the U.S. West Coast and Alaska.

Approximately 80,000 of those sequestered under FDR’s exec­u­tive order were second- and third-gener­a­tion Amer­i­can citi­zens born in the United States (Nisei and San­sei, respec­tively), not-so-cleverly reclas­si­fied by the govern­ment as “non-aliens” in a ham-fisted sus­pen­sion of their birth­right under the 14th Amend­ment to the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. Almost half of those incar­cer­ated were chil­dren born in the U.S. (In Canada, 22,000 Japa­nese nationals and Cana­dian-born Japa­nese [the latter popu­la­tion repre­senting 62 per­cent of the total] suffered simi­lar or worse treat­ment: the Cana­dian govern­ment confis­cated and sold their pro­perty to help defray the cost of relo­cating and detaining them. South of the border almost 5,000 Japa­nese were evicted from Mexico’s Pacific Coast and plunked down in Mexico City and Gua­da­la­jara.) Suddenly uprooted from their homes, work­places, places of worship and learning, and deprived of or forced to sell off prac­ti­cally every­thing they had acquired over a life­time (Japa­nese nationals had their bank accounts frozen), native-born Japa­nese Amer­icans and Japa­nese nationals residing in the U.S. (known as Issei; with a single excep­tion, first-generation Japa­nese were pre­vented by law from acquiring U.S. citizen­ship) were taken first to 1 of 15 assem­bly cen­ters, or tem­porary deten­tion camps. Cali­for­nia’s San Joa­quin County Fair­grounds and the Santa Anita and Tan­foran race­track stables, still reeking of their former 4‑legged occu­pants, were 3 sites con­verted into tem­porary deten­tion camps. Then they were shipped to any of 10 per­ma­nent in­land relo­cation cen­ters where they were held with­out due process of law “for the dura­tion” inside barbed wire enclo­sures, watched over by armed military police (see map below).

Notwithstanding that America was at war with both Japan and Nazi Germany, Hawai­ians of Japa­nese ancestry and German Amer­i­cans and German U.S. resi­dents were not incar­cer­ated en masse and there­fore escaped dis­en­fran­chise­ment, measure­less sepa­ra­tion, precious lost years, miser­able depri­va­tion, mono­tonous camp routine, enforced idle­ness, and depen­dence on the U.S. govern­ment for their food, shelter, and health care. Under the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment’s Enemy Alien Con­trol Pro­gram, the govern­ment detained and incar­cer­ated just over 11,000 German enemy aliens, as well as a small num­ber of German Amer­i­can citi­zens, either natu­ral­ized or native born. The popu­la­tion of German citi­zens in the United States—not to men­tion Amer­i­can citizens of German birth—was far too large for a gen­eral policy of disen­fran­chise­ment and mass confine­ment compa­rable to that used against people of Japa­nese ancestry (Nikkei). Instead, German citi­zens were detained and removed from coastal areas on an indi­vid­ual basis. The evic­tions amounted to only several hun­dred. In addi­tion, over 4,500 eth­nic Germans were brought to the U.S. from Central and South Amer­ica and the Carib­bean island of Cuba and sim­i­larly detained based on a list covertly drawn up by the Federal Bureau of Inves­ti­gation with the encour­age­ment of Presi­dent Roose­velt. The FBI sus­pected these Germans of sub­ver­sive activ­i­ties abroad and demanded the evic­tion of these “danger­ous Axis agents” to this coun­try for deten­tion in camps oper­ated by the U.S. Immi­gra­tion and Natu­ra­li­za­tion Ser­vice and the Justice Depart­ment or else their repat­ri­a­tion to Germany. Many Germans had been resi­dents of Latin Amer­ica for years, some for decades. Nine Latin American coun­tries and Canada set up their own Axis con­fine­ment camps. Only pro-Fascist Argentina refused to play along.

Executive Order 9066 Cleared the Way for the Forced Exile and Relocation of West Coast Enemy Aliens and Japanese Americans to a New Existence in Confinement Centers Far from Their Homes

Above: Map showing (a) the massive World War II exclusion area (Mili­tary Areas 1 and 2) and (b) sites of con­fine­ment in the conti­nen­tal U.S. for over 120,000 Japa­nese nationals (“alien enemies”) and Japa­nese Amer­i­can citizens (labeled “non-alien enemies”) who resided in 4 Western states as well as for over 31,000 sus­pected enemy nationals and their fami­lies interned under the Enemy Alien Con­trol Pro­gram. The 10 hastily built confine­ment sites, euphe­mis­tically called “relo­ca­tion centers,” are iden­ti­fied by black tri­angles. The sites were located in 7 states all west of the Mis­sis­sippi River and cost the govern­ment $40 mil­lion annually to operate. All relo­ca­tion centers were built in out-of-the-way places, many in deso­late high deserts or swamp land. Iden­ti­fied by stars are facilities admin­is­tered by the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice and the U.S. Army. It was to these often former Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps camps that several thou­sand Japa­nese detained in Decem­ber 1941 and early 1942—that is, before Exec­u­tive Order 9066 was in place—were inter­ro­gated and locked up indefinitely. Indeed, the full extent of war­time incar­cera­tion includes thou­sands of German and Ital­ian nationals living in the U.S. or deported from Cen­tral and South Amer­ica, plus relo­cated Alaskan natives, Japa­nese Latin Amer­icans, and some Japa­nese Hawai­ians incar­cerated in more than 75 gover­nment facili­ties in the United States. In the map legend WCCA = War­time Civil Con­trol Administration, WRA = War Relocation Authority.

Left: “OUSTER OF ALL JAPS IN CALIFORNIA NEAR!” San Fran­cisco Exam­iner head­lines of Japa­nese relo­ca­tion, Febru­ary 27, 1942. On May 21, 1942, the rival San Fran­cisco Chron­icle told its readers: “S.F. Clear of All But 6 Sick Japs. . . . The last group, 274 of them, were moved yes­ter­day.” Photo by Doro­thea Lange. Lange was 1 of 3 photo­graphers the WRA hired in 1942–1943. The other 2 were Clem Albers and Francis Stewart. A civil­ian, Ansel Adams made multi­ple trips on his own to Man­zanar between 1943 and 1944, docu­menting camp life. In 1944 Manzanar resi­dent Toyo Miya­take was permitted by Manzanar’s project director to con­tinue taking photo­graphs inside the camp enclo­sure (he had taken photos surrepti­tiously) and set up a portrait studio.

Right: Official notice of exclusion and removal, dated April 1, 1942. Photo­graph by Dorothea Lange, April 11, 1942. The exclu­sion order posted at First and Front streets in San Fran­cisco directed the removal of persons of Japa­nese ances­try from the first San Fran­cisco sec­tion to be affected by the evac­u­ation. Years before the Decem­ber 7, 1941, Japa­nese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the U.S. govern­ment had drafted plans to intern some Japa­nese Amer­icans and immi­grant aliens and had already placed some West Coast com­mu­ni­ties under sur­veil­lance. This in spite of years’ worth of FBI and naval intel­ligence data that attested to resi­dents of Japa­nese descent posing no national security threat. The exclu­sion order also swept up Japa­nese Amer­i­can sol­diers who had taken an oath of allegiance to their country of birth.

Left: With luggage tags affixed to their clothing—an aid in keeping family units intact during all phases of their forced removal—members of the Moriji Mochida family await an evac­u­a­tion bus in Hay­ward, Ala­meda County (San Fran­cisco Bay area), Cali­for­nia, May 8, 1942. On the lug­gage tags was written the family’s desig­nated iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber. Mochida’s youngest child was 3. The Mochidas had oper­ated a 2‑acre/­0.8‑hectare nur­sery and 5 green­houses in San Lean­dro, Ala­meda County, before their incarceration. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

Right: The forced exodus of Japanese in Los Angeles started at the end of March 1942. Staring into uncer­tainty 2‑year-old Yuki Oki­naga Haya­kawa, clutching a tiny purse and an apple with a few bites gone, waits with the family’s allot­ment of bag­gage before leaving a chaotic scene at Los Angeles’s Union Sta­tion. The child and her single mother, Mikiko, even­tually arrived, like most Japa­nese Angeleno evac­uees, at Man­za­nar War Relo­ca­tion Cen­ter, more than 200 miles/­322 kilo­meters north of LA in Cali­for­nia’s Owens Valley, which would be their home for the next 3½ years. Each dis­placed family mem­ber was permit­ted to take bedding and linens (no mat­tresses), toilet arti­cles, extra clothing, and “essen­tial per­sonal effects,” nothing more; in other words, only what could be carried by an individual. Photograph by Clem Albers.

Left: The Matsuda family closed its grocery and Japanese goods store in Oak­land, Cali­fornia, during March 1942. Son Tatsuro, a Nisei grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Cali­for­nia, Berkeley, com­mis­sioned the large sign “I AM AN AMER­I­CAN” and had it installed shortly after Decem­ber 7, 1941. Photo­graph by Dorothea Lange. Decla­ra­tions like young Matsuda’s were insuf­fi­cient to over­come the suspi­cion and con­tempt directed at people who looked like the enemy and who, it was widely assumed at the time, remained loyal to Japan and its em­peror Hiro­hito (post­humously referred to as Emperor Shōwa).

Right: In 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the consti­tu­tionality of the exclu­sion orders, described by many Amer­i­cans as the worst offi­cial civil rights vio­la­tion of modern U.S. history. After years of law­suits and nego­ti­a­tions, on August 10, 1988, Presi­dent Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liber­ties Act of 1988, which formally acknowl­edged that the war­time exclu­sion, evac­u­a­tion, and confine­ment of Japa­nese Amer­i­cans had been unrea­son­able. The act granted $20,000 in repa­ra­tions to each sur­viving Japa­nese Amer­i­can (about 82,000 people), costing the U.S. Treas­ury $1.6 billion. (A month later the Cana­dian prime minis­ter signed a simi­lar settle­ment and apol­ogy.) It took a decade to locate all eligi­ble U.S. recip­i­ents and deliver them their checks and formal apol­ogy. In 1991 sur­vi­vors of the more than 2,200 Latin Amer­i­cans of Japa­nese descent who were evicted by their govern­ments and incar­cer­ated in U.S. camps were com­pen­sated with a piti­fully small $5,000 check. A late 20th-cen­tury study con­cluded that the inter­nal govern­ment deci­sions that led to Roose­velt issuing Exe­cu­tive Order 9066 were based on racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and failed political leadership.

Injustice Camouflaged as Military Necessity: Japanese American Incarceration During World War II