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Japanese Internment
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Japanese Internment
Background
Start Here
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.
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Background Information Video
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Timeline
Mar. 24, 1942
Dec. 17, 1944
Dec. 7, 1941
Relocation orders are revoked and exclusion is lifted, effective January 2, 1945.
The first Civilian Exclusion Order is issued by the Army, giving families one week to prepare for removal from their homes
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, leading the U.S. to enter World War II
Timeline
Pre-1940
June 2, 1942
General sentiment in the United States is pretty racist against people of Asian decent.
All Japanese in Military Area 1 in California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona have been removed into Army custody.
Feb. 19, 1942
Aug, 10, 1988
President Franklin D. Roosevelts signs Executive Order 9066, providing for the exclusion of any person from any area at the discretion of the military.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 is passed by Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan. The Act apologizes for internment and provides for reparations to survivors.
Life in the Camps
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted
Life in the Camps
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.
What can you tell about life in the camps?
Take a look at these photos
Mitsuo (Mits) Mori, 9, receiving a haircut at the Tule Lake Segregation Center in California. His father, Harry Megumi Mori, owned the thriving Ohio Cleaners on Third Street in San Francisco, serving merchant marines and commuters since 1930. A customer, a San Francisco police inspector, took care of their valuables while the family was incarcerated and sent them care packages.
Yukiko Okinaga Hayakawa spent three years incarcerated in Block 2 at the Manzanar War Relocation Center with her single mother, Mikiko Hayakawa, 24. The second-generation Japanese American was a 2-year-old as she sat on her luggage, holding an apple at Union Station in Los Angeles, after they left their home in Little Tokyo in April 1942.
Fumiko Hayashida, 31, carrying her daughter, Natalie Kayo, 13 months, as she prepared to board the ferry at Bainbridge Island, Wash. Hayashida was among a large group of Japanese-Americans taken by soldiers to the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California after Executive Order 9066 was issued on Feb. 19, 1942. She arrived at Manzanar by train on April 1, 1942.
A photograph taken by Dorothea Lange in April 1942 of the third-generation Japanese-American Hideno Nakamoto, 7, left, and the second-generation Yoko Itashiki, 7, center, as they recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the Raphael Weill School in San Francisco. Soon after, they were sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center and then the Topaz War Relocation Center in the Utah desert.
What can you tell about life in the camps?
And these...
Making camouflage nets for the United States War Department.
Harvey Akio Itano, 21, a 1942 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, in his quarters at the Walerga Assembly Center. Mr. Itano received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. He was held at Walerga before the commencement exercises.
The Japanese-American war hero Ben Kuroki speaking at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming, which held 11,000 people of Japanese descent. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Mr. Kuroki, a Nebraska farmer, volunteered for the United States Army Air Corps. He would become the first Japanese-American war hero, surviving 58 missions as an aerial gunner over Europe, North Africa and Japan. April 4, 1944.
Itaru Ina, foreground, in the Tule Lake Segregation Center jail before being sent to the Department of Justice internment camp for enemy aliens at Fort Lincoln in Bismarck, N.D. He became a member of the Hoshi Dan, a political pro-Japan organization focused on returning to Japan. June 24, 1945.
The Case
After watching the video below, return to Google Classroom for your next task.
Korematsu v. United States
Korematsu v. United States
8 min.