Japanese Incarceration and the Fight for Redress at White House

“To undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally but we seldom have the foresight.”¹ -First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on Japanese Incarceration

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 at the White House, authorizing the forced removal of any persons deemed a threat to national security to military zones during World War II. The order responded to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two months earlier, which caused widespread anti-Asian hysteria toward the Japanese American community.²

Executive Order 9066 prompted the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to inland camps without legal trial.³ These individuals largely fit into two categories: issei (Japanese immigrants to the United States) and nisei (first-generation citizens), making up one-third and two-thirds of interned Japanese Americans, respectively.⁴ Men, women, and children were given little time to sell homes and businesses and gather a few personal items before being removed to temporary detention centers; later, they were transferred to one of ten large American concentration camps established by the War Relocation Authority.⁵

Some Japanese Americans prefer the term “American concentration camp” when discussing these sites. Today, the term “concentration camp” is often associated with Nazi Germany during World War II. However, the U.S. government often used milder language to describe Japanese incarceration, including “internment” and “relocation/assembly centers,” which obscure the reality of these spaces. This article uses guidelines established by the Japanese American Citizens League in their “Power of Words Handbook” to honor their lived experience during this period.⁶

These camps were primarily based in remote parts of the western United States with harsh conditions. The cramped military-style barracks lacked any form of privacy, as families packed together under the eyes of armed guards.⁷ Poor sanitation, diseases, and food scarcity also plagued the camps, documented in oral histories from issei and nisei.⁸ Despite these conditions, prisoners attempted to maintain a sense of normalcy through community clubs, recreation, and more.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a known advocate for human rights and equality, opposed her husband’s Executive Order. In her December 16, 1941 “My Day” column, she wrote:

...the great mass of our people, stemming from these various national ties, must not feel that they have suddenly ceased to be Americans... if we cannot keep in check anti- semitism, anti-racial feelings as well as anti-religious feelings, then we shall have removed from the world, the one real hope for the future on which all humanity must now rely.⁹

Behind the scenes—and often against her husband’s wishes—she met with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and community leaders like Michio Kunitani to encourage the president to end incarceration.¹⁰ In April 1943, the first lady visited Gila River camp (pictured below) in Arizona, where the hardworking Japanese Americans and the conditions she encountered became subjects in her popular column.¹¹ She even proposed to President Roosevelt that an incarcerated Japanese-American family should move into the White House, though he disagreed.¹²

Despite the unjust treatment they received from the United States government, approximately 33,000 nisei served in the military during World War II in active combat units or military intelligence.¹³ The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, entirely made up of Japanese Americans, is the most decorated unit of its size and service length in the U.S. Armed Forces.¹⁴ As President Harry Truman later said: “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice.”¹⁵

Meanwhile, Japanese Americans at home fought against this wrongful incarceration via acts of resistance and formal political and legal avenues, including several Supreme Court cases.¹⁶ Perhaps the most famous of these was Korematsu v. United States, in which Fred Korematsu, a nisei man, disobeyed exclusion orders and was eventually arrested. The Supreme Court ruled incarceration constitutional in his case.¹⁷ But one of these cases was successful: Ex parte Endo. Mitsuye Endo, a nisei state government employee imprisoned at Tule Lake Relocation Center, filed a habeas corpus petition, and eventually, the case made it to the nation’s highest court. On December 18, 1944, the court decided in her favor, ruling that loyal citizens could not be imprisoned without cause.¹⁸

As a result, President Roosevelt issued a proclamation lifting exclusion orders and allowing prisoners to return to the West Coast, effective January 2, 1945.¹⁹ But reintegration to society was anything but easy; many had little to return to, having been forced to sell property and businesses before removal, and anti-Asian prejudice continued to plague Japanese Americans long after the war had ended.²⁰

In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially revoked Executive Order 9066, remarking “In this Bicentennial Year, we are commemorating the anniversary dates of many great events in American history. An honest reckoning, however, must include a recognition of our national mistakes as well as our national achievements.”²¹

But another decade would pass until a true reckoning came. Ideas for reparations for the violation of rights and loss of property had been brewing among young nisei for years, especially in the wake of other mid-century civil rights movements. In 1978, the Japanese American Citizens League created a redress committee led by John Tateishi.²² Prompted by the committee, Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga of Hawai’i and California Representatives Robert Matsui and Norman Mineta introduced legislation to investigate wrongdoing by the U.S. government via Executive Order 9066.²³ These congressmen all had close ties to the issue at hand—Inouye and Matsunaga both served in the 442nd Infantry Regiment, and Matsui and Mineta had both been incarcerated as children during World War II.

President Jimmy Carter signed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Act into law in the Cabinet Room of the White House on July 31, 1980, to “expose clearly what has happened in a period of war in our Nation when many loyal American citizens of Japanese descent were embarrassed during that crucial time in our Nation's history.”²⁴ In 1983, the Commission submitted a report to Congress based on testimonies from 750 witnesses and additional primary and secondary source research.²⁵ The report concluded that there was no military justification for incarceration, and that “The broad historical causes that shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”²⁶ It went on to document the financial loss, stigmatization, and psychological impact experienced by Japanese Americans following their release and proposed remedial measures to rectify these violations.²⁷

Those measures came five years later, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 into law. It included an official apology and provided reparations of $20,000 to each survivor.²⁸ At the ceremony, held in the Old Executive Office Building, the president said:

The legislation that I am about to sign provides for a restitution payment to each of the 60,000 surviving Japanese-Americans of the 120,000 who were relocated or detained. Yet no payment can make up for those lost years... here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.²⁹

That day, real progress was made to undo a mistake as Eleanor Roosevelt once imagined. Many presidents have honored the sacrifices of Japanese Americans at the White House, from honoring World War II veterans to recognizing the activism of individuals like Fred Korematsu.