Internment of Japanese Americans
 Institutions of the Wartime Civil Control Administration and War Relocation Authority in the Midwestern, Southern and Western U.S. | |
| Date | February 19, 1942 – March 20, 1946[1][2][3] |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Prisoners | Between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast 1,200 to 1,800 living in Hawaii |
In the United States during World War II, about 120,000[5] people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast, were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in concentration camps in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the internees were United States citizens.[6] These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[7]
Of the 127,000 Japanese Americans who were living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast.[8] About 80,000 were Nisei (literal translation: 'second generation'; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei ('third generation', the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ('first generation') immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.[9]
Japanese Americans were placed in concentration camps based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 112,000 Japanese Americans who were living on the West Coast were interned in camps which were located in its interior. However, in Hawaii (which was under martial law), where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were also interned.[10] The internment is considered to have been a manifestation of racism – though it was implemented to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose, the scale of the internment in proportion to the size of the Japanese American population far surpassed similar measures which were undertaken against German and Italian Americans, who were mostly non-citizens.[11][12] California defined anyone with 1/16th or more Japanese lineage as a person who should be interned.[13] Colonel Karl Bendetsen, the architect of the program, went so far as to say that anyone with "one drop of Japanese blood" qualified.[14]
Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066, issued two months after Pearl Harbor, which allowed regional military commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded."[15] Although the executive order did not mention Japanese Americans, this authority was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were required to leave Alaska[16] and the military exclusion zones from all of California and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, with the exception of those internees who were being held in government camps.[17] The internees were not only people of Japanese ancestry, they also included a relatively small number—though still totaling well over ten thousand—of people of German and Italian ancestry as well as Germans who were expelled from Latin America and deported to the U.S.[18]: 124 [19] Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942,[20] while some 5,500 community leaders had been arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack and thus were already in custody.[21] Wikipedia.com
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