Internment of Japanese Americans

Jerome War Relocation Center in Jerome, Arkansas

Japanese people heading off to an internment camp. Photograph by Dorothea Lange

Japanese American internment was the forced removal and internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans (62% of whom were United States citizens) from the West Coast of the United States during World War II. While approximately 10,000 were able to relocate to other parts of the country of their own choosing, the remainder – roughly 110,000 men, women and children – were sent to hastily constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers" in remote portions of the nation's interior.

President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion, removal, and detention, arguing that it is permissible to curtail the civil rights of a racial group when there is a "pressing public necessity."

Some compensation for property losses was paid in 1948, but most internees were unable to fully recover their losses. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation stated that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership", and beginning in 1990, the government paid reparations to surviving internees.

Historical context of anti-Asian/Japanese sentiment

Main article: Anti-Japanese sentiment

Key government actions involving Japanese Americans

The roots of the internment run back to the turn of the 20th century. Tensions between Caucasian and Asian immigrants (especially in California) starting in the late 1840s, had begun to increase in the 1890s. A series of laws were passed, aimed at discouraging Japanese immigration and prohibiting naturalization and even land ownership by Japanese. Eventually there was a ban on virtually all immigration from Japan, beginning in 1924. Other laws in California and an unknown number of other states prevented marriages between Caucasians and Asians, though Nisei (second generation Japanese-Americans), were able to marry non-Caucasians (a number of those went into the camps when their spouses and children were interned).

Government actions prior to Pearl Harbor attack

In 1935, FBI agents had surprised two Japanese nationals preparing to sabotage the radio direction finder in the chart room of the new China Clipper air service then being inaugurated. The air service was understood to be an important means of strengthening U.S. influence in and around the Philippines, then a U.S. colony.

During the period of 1939–1941, the FBI compiled the Custodial Detention index ("CDI") on citizens, "enemy" aliens and foreign nationals who might be dangerous based principally on census records.

On June 28, 1940, the Alien Registration Act was passed. Among many other "loyalty" regulations, Section 31 required the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens above the age of 14, and Section 35 required aliens to report any change of address within 5 days. "Within 4 months, 4,741,971 foreign nationals had registered at post offices around the country."

Immediate responses to the Pearl Harbor attack

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 led many to suspect the Japanese were preparing a full-scale attack on the west coast of the United States. Moreover, Japan's rapid military conquest of a large portion of Asia and the Pacific between 1936 and 1942 made their military forces seem to some Americans frighteningly unstoppable.

Civilian and military officials had concerns about the loyalty of the ethnic Japanese on the west coast and considered them to be security risks, although these concerns often arose more from racial bias than actual risk. Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that "A Jap's a Jap" and testified to Congress, "I do not 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 a 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." The inclusion of orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" (as explained in a letter by one official) lends credence to the argument that the measures were racially motivated, rather than a military necessity.

Authorities also feared sabotage of both military and civilian facilities inside the United States. Military officials expressed concerns that California's water systems were highly vulnerable, and there were concerns about the possibility of arson — brush fires in particular.

Administration and military leaders also doubted the loyalty of ethnic Japanese because many of them (including some born in America) had been educated in Japan, where school curricula emphasized reverence for the Emperor. It was feared that this population might commit acts of espionage or sabotage for the Japanese military. However, internment was never limited to those who had ever been to Japan, but only on the basis of their Japanese ancestry.

Upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Presidential Proclamations 2525 (Japanese), 2526 (German) and 2527 (Italian) were signed. Many homes were raided using information from the CDI, and hundreds of aliens were in custody by the end of the day, including Germans and Italians (although war was not declared on Germany or Italy until December 11). Presidential Proclamation 2537 was issued on January 14 1942, requiring aliens to report any change of address, employment or name to the FBI. Enemy aliens were not allowed to enter restricted areas. Violators of these regulations were subject to "arrest, detention and internment for the duration of the war."

However, no US citizens of German or Italian ancestry were interned on the basis of their ethnic origin. In fact, in contrast to the racism against US citizens of Japanese ancestry, and especially contradicting the loyalty argument used against them, is the fact that the US commanders of both the Pacific Theatre of Operations and the European Theatre of Operations were both men of German ancestry, Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Dwight D. Eisenhower, respectively.

Executive Order 9066 and related actions

San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 1942, newspaper headlines.

Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19 1942, allowed authorized military commanders to designate "military areas" at their discretion, "from which any or all persons may be excluded." These "exclusion zones", unlike the "alien enemy" roundups, were applicable to anyone that an authorized military commander might choose, whether citizen or non-citizen. Eventually such zones would include parts of both the East and West Coasts totalling about 1/3 of the country by area. Unlike the subsequent detainment and internment programs that would come to be applied to large numbers of Japanese-Americans, detentions and restrictions directly under this Individual Exclusion Program were placed primarily on individuals of German or Italian ancestry, including American citizens.

• March 2 1942: General John L. DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 1, informing all those of Japanese ancestry that they would, at some later point, be subject to exclusion orders from "Military Area No. 1" (essentially, the entire Pacific coast to about 100 miles (160.9 km) inland), and requiring anyone who had "enemy" ancestry to file a Change of Residence Notice if they planned to move. A second exclusion zone was designated several months later, which included the areas chosen by most of the Japanese Americans who had managed to leave the first zone.
• March 11 1942: Executive Order 9095 created the Office of the Alien Property Custodian, and gave it discretionary, plenary authority over all alien property interests. Many assets were frozen, creating immediate financial difficulty for the affected aliens, preventing most from moving out of the exclusion zones.

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Official notice of exclusion and removal

• March 24 1942: Public Proclamation No. 3 declares an 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew for "all enemy aliens and all persons of Japanese ancestry" within the military areas.
• March 24 1942: General DeWitt began to issue Civilian Exclusion Orders for specific areas within "Military Area No. 1."
• March 27 1942: General DeWitt's Proclamation No. 4 prohibited all those of Japanese ancestry from leaving "Military Area No. 1" for "any purpose until and to the extent that a future proclamation or order of this headquarters shall so permit or direct."
• May 3 1942: General DeWitt issued Civilian Exclusion Order No. 346, ordering all people of Japanese ancestry, whether citizens or non-citizens, to report to assembly centers, where they would live until being moved to permanent "Relocation Centers."

Non-military advocates for exclusion, removal, and detention

Internment was popular among many white farmers who resented the Japanese American farmers. These individuals saw internment as a convenient means of uprooting their Japanese American competitors. Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the Saturday Evening Post in 1942: "We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men… If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we had never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either."

In fact, internment was likely responsible for a massive influx in immigration from Mexico. Significant labor was necessary to take over the Japanese Americans' farms at a time when many American laborers were also being inducted into the Armed Forces. Ironically, thousands of Nikkei, temporarily released from the internment camps to harvest Western beet crops, were credited with saving this industry.

Military necessity as justification for internment

Possible evidence of espionage

The role of the MAGIC intercepts is a central issue in the military necessity dispute. The MAGIC intercepts contained decrypted communications by the Japanese government and military. Many of these are reprinted in Lowman's book. In a handful of the decrypted messages, the Japanese consulate stated that it was attempting to recruit Japanese American spies. The main criticism of the relevance of the intercepts is that much of the information that Japanese officials obtained may have come from public sources such as newspapers, and that there is no data indicating the success of these recruitment efforts. Another point of dispute is whether the key decision makers (a) had access to the MAGIC intercepts, and (b) the extent to which these intercepts contributed to the perception of military threat posed by the Japanese American community. It was Stimson, McCloy and Roosevelt who made the decision. They had access to the MAGIC intercepts which were closely held. The intercepts could not be revealed at the time as this would have let the Japanese know the United States had broken their diplomatic and naval codes. Information from Japanese intercepts was largely responsible for the American victory in the naval battle at Midway.

General DeWitt, who ordered the internment, was not on the severely limited distribution list for intelligence developed from MAGIC.{fact|date=November 2007}} Ironically, Nisei members of the Military Intelligence Service were assigned to analysis and translation of the raw intercepts. Also ironic is that in 1942 in the case of a Japanese spy ring in the US-did not involve Japanese Americans but was a native born US Citizen Velvalee Dickinson.

The most widely reported examples of espionage and treason are the Tachibana spy ring and the Niihau Incident. The Tachibana spy ring was a group of Japanese nationals who were arrested shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack and were deported. The Niihau Incident occurred just after the Pearl Harbor attack, two Japanese Americans on Niihau freed a captured Japanese pilot and assisted him in his machine-gun attack on Native Hawaiians there. Despite this incident taking place in Hawaii, the Territorial Governor rejected calls for wholesale internment of Japanese Americans in the Islands.

Some present-day supporters of the internment have argued that some Japanese Americans were indeed disloyal, as seen by the approximately 20,000 Japanese Americans in Japan at the start of the war who joined the Japanese war effort, hundreds joining the Japanese Army. One particular example is Tomoya Kawakita, an American citizen who worked as an interpreter and a POW guard for the Japanese army, and who actively participated in the torture (and at least one death) of American soldiers, including survivors of the Bataan Death March. Kawakita was convicted for treason and imprisoned.

Rebuttals of possible evidence of espionage

Critics of this viewpoint note that it seems unlikely that Japanese Americans in Japan had any choice other than to be conscripted into the Japanese army, given (1) that it was near-impossible for them to return to the U.S. from Japan, and (2) that the United States had already classified all people of Japanese ancestry as "enemy aliens."

Critics of the internment argue that the military justification was unfounded, citing the absence of any subsequent convictions of Japanese Americans for espionage.

An additional reason to question the necessity of internment was an official report by Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Ringle, a naval intelligence officer tasked with evaluating the loyalty of the Japanese American population. LCDR Ringle estimated in a 1941 report to his superiors that "more than 90% of the Nisei [second generation] and 75% of the original immigrants were completely loyal to the United States." A 1941 report prepared on President Roosevelt's orders by Curtis B. Munson, special representative of the State Department, concluded that most Japanese nationals and "90 to 98%" of Japanese American citizens were loyal. He wrote: "There is no Japanese 'problem' on the Coast… There is far more danger from Communists and people of the Bridges type on the Coast than there is from Japanese."

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment of Japanese Americans. Refuting General DeWitt's reports of disloyalty on the part of Japanese Americans, Hoover sent a memo to Attorney General Francis Biddle in which he wrote about Japanese-American disloyalty, "Every complaint in this regard has been investigated, but in no case has any information been obtained which would substantiate the allegation."

Facilities

While this event is most commonly called the internment of Japanese Americans, in fact there were several different types of camps involved. The best known facilities were the Assembly Centers run by the Western Civilian Control Administration (WCCA), and the Relocation Centers run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which are generally (but unofficially) referred to as "internment camps." The Department of Justice (DOJ) operated camps officially called Internment Camps, which were used to detain those suspected of actual crimes or "enemy sympathies." German American internment and Italian American internment camps were also run, sometimes sharing facilities with the Japanese Americans. The WCCA and WRA facilities were the largest and the most public. The WCCA Assembly Centers were temporary facilities that were first set up in horse racing tracks, fairgrounds and other large public meeting places to assemble and organize internees before they were transported to WRA Relocation Centers by truck, bus or train. The WRA Relocation Centers were camps that housed persons removed from the exclusion zone after March 1942, or until they were able to relocate elsewhere in America outside the exclusion zone.

Terminology debate

Ever since World War II ended, there has been much debate over what to call the camps where Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents were interned by the United States Government during World War II. The US Government officially called them "War Relocation Centers." From that, some called them "relocation camps" or "prison camps," while others called them "internment camps." Still others have called them "concentration camps." President Franklin Roosevelt himself called them "concentration camps" in a public address November 21, 1944. The War Relocation Authority, Justice Department and U.S. Army all referred to them as "concentration camps" in both internal documents and inter-departmental documents as well as in reports to congress.

Relocation center/camp

Those who contend that the camps should be called "relocation centers" or "relocation camps" argue that "relocation" is the appropriate term because this was the official terminology used by the WRA. This parallels the use of the term "concentration camp" for the Nazi camps, for example, where the official terminology used by the Nazis for them was "Konzentrationslager." For example, Manzanar was officially known as the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Because of this, the National Park Service has chosen to use "relocation center" when it refers to the American camps.

However, many historians and scholars, as well as former internees, object to the use of this term because the people who were sent to these camps were not merely "relocated." In fact, Japanese Americans were forcibly uprooted from their homes and communities, and were imprisoned in what could also be referred to as "prison camps." They contend that "relocation center" was a euphemism--a name used in an attempt to downplay and sanitize the real purpose of these camps--to hide the reality of what they really were.

Internment camp

Another widely used name for the American camps is "internment camp." To be sure, those held behind the barbed wire at each of these camps are commonly referred to as "internees." However, "internment" (and "internee") is felt by some to be only partially accurate when used in this case because it refers to detaining enemy aliens during wartime. In the American camps, over 110,000 were imprisoned, but two-thirds were native-born American citizens and the rest were unable to become citizens because of laws preventing their naturalization. As such, "internment" (and "internee") is only partially accurate, and only because laws prevented the Issei (first-generation; immigrants) from naturalizing. In fact, use of "internment," "internee," and "enemy alien" were all part of the US Government's effort to disguise the reality of what they were doing behind the barbed wire.

Use of "internment camp" is also potentially confusing in this case because the United States Department of Justice operated separate camps that were officially called "internment camps" (see below) where some Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.

Concentration camp

The most contentious name that is commonly used for the ten camps is "concentration camp."

Those who object to its use to describe American camps such as Manzanar are generally those who equate the term with the Holocaust and the Nazi concentration camps and/or the Nazi death camps because "concentration camp" is what the Nazis officially called their camps. Today, many historians, scholars, and publications differentiate between Nazi death camps and Nazi concentration camps which were "facilities initially meant to isolate Nazi political opponents and later to house people the Nazis considered racially inferior," though millions of Jews and non-Jews were exterminated at the so-called concentration camps. Some also insist that any other use of "concentration camp" for camps that did not involve massive genocide lessens and/or cheapens the experiences, and extermination, of Jews and non-Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.

Even the National Park Service has made a conscious effort to avoid use of "concentration camp" when describing the American camps:

"I have recommended that the NPS not use the term 'concentration camp' in its interpretation because the term has become inextricably associated with the Nazi death camps of World War II," said Gordon Chappell, Regional Historian, National Park Service, Pacific West Field Area, San Francisco.

Recognizing the controversy over the terminology, in 1971, when the Manzanar Committee applied to the California Department of Parks and Recreation to have Manzanar designated as a California State Historical Landmark, it was proposed that both "relocation center" and "concentration camp" be used in the wording of the plaque for the landmark. Some Owens Valley residents vehemently opposed the use of "concentration camp," and it took a year of discussion and negotiation before both terms were accepted and included on the plaque.

To date, former internees and the Japanese American community, along with many historians and scholars have not compared the American camps with the Nazi death camps.

Controversy over the use of "concentration camp" is not limited to discussion of the American camps. Indeed, many Holocaust survivors, historians, scholars, and some Jewish community and civil rights organizations contend that "concentration camp" was the Nazi's euphemism--it was their attempt to hide what their camps really were: death camps or extermination camps, not merely camps within which people were "concentrated." Indeed, a common definition of "concentration camp" mentions nothing about exterminating its prisoners:

"Concentration camp (n; 1901): a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined."

Based on that definition, "concentration camp" would appear to be an accurate term for the ten American camps. After all, those held in these camps were, for all intents and purposes, prisoners of war in their own country, and they were certainly political prisoners.

Furthermore, some US Government officials actually referred to the American camps as "concentration camps." President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed Executive Order 9066, referred to the American camps as "concentration camps." Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, a member of Roosevelt's cabinet, also made this reference. In addition, Associate US Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, President Harry S. Truman, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Attorney General Francis Biddle, and some members of Congress also referred to them as "concentration camps."

Supporters of the "concentration camp" terminology thus contend that its use by these high-ranking US Government officials, including two Presidents, coupled with the generic, original meaning of the term (which had nothing to do with the Holocaust) makes it the most accurate and appropriate of the various options available.

DOJ Internment Camps

During World War II, over 7,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese from Latin America were held in internment camps run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, part of the Department of Justice. There were twenty-seven U.S. Department of Justice Camps, eight of which (in Texas, Idaho, North Dakota, New Mexico, and Montana) held Japanese Americans. The camps were guarded by Border Patrol agents rather than military police and were intended for non-citizens including Buddhist ministers, Japanese language instructors, newspaper workers, and other community leaders.

In addition 2,210 persons of Japanese ancestry taken from 12 Latin American countries by the U.S. State and Justice Departments were held at the Department of Justice Camps. Approximately 1,800 were Japanese Peruvians. The rumor persists that the United States intended to use them in hostage exchanges with Japan, but there is no historical evidence that this was ever the plan. There was a program to repatriate Americans (civilian and POW) and Japanese nationals, but this was ended after reports by international observers described the treatment given to internees.

After the war, 1,400 were not allowed to return to their Latin American homes and more than 900 Japanese Peruvians were involuntarily deported to Japan. Three hundred fought deportation in the courts and were allowed to settle in the United States.

Initially, the Japanese brought into the United States from South America were to be deported because they had entered the country without passports or visas. Later Court of Appeals decisions overturned this absurd finding, pointing out that they had been brought into the country both against their will and following a process which was essentially a form of kidnapping at the behest of the United States.

WCCA Assembly Centers

Executive Order 9066 authorized the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the west coast, it was signed when there was no place for the Japanese Americans to go. When voluntary evacuation proved impractical, the military took over full responsibility for the evacuation; on April 9 1942, the Wartime Civilian Control Agency (WCCA) was established by the military to coordinate the evacuation to inland relocation centers. However, the relocation centers were far from ready for large influxes of people. For some, there was still contention over the location, but for most, their placement in isolated undeveloped areas of the country exacerbated problems of building infrastructure and housing. Since the Japanese Amerhdfrhdfdficans living in the restricted zone were considered too dangerous to freely conduct their daily business, the military decided it was necessary to find temporary "assembly centers" to house the evacuees until the relocation centers were completed.

WRA Relocation Centers

Name	State	Opened	Max. Pop'n
Manzanar	California	March 1942	10,046
Tule Lake	California	May 1942	18,789
Poston	Arizona	May 1942	17,814
Gila River	Arizona	July 1942	13,348
Granada	Colorado	August 1942	7,318
Heart Mountain	Wyoming	August 1942	10,767
Minidoka	Idaho	August 1942	9,397
Topaz	Utah	September 1942	8,130
Rohwer	Arkansas	September 1942	8,475
Jerome	Arkansas	October 1942	8,497

WRA Relocation Camps

The War Relocation Authority (WRA) was the U.S. civilian agency responsible for the relocation and detention. The WRA was created by President Roosevelt on March 18 1942 with Executive Order 9102 and officially ceased to exist June 30 1946. Milton S. Eisenhower, then an official of the Department of Agriculture, was chosen to head the WRA. Within nine months, the WRA had opened ten facilities in seven states, and transferred over 100,000 people from the WCCA facilities.

The WRA camp at Tule Lake, though initially like the other camps, eventually became a detention center for people believed to pose a security risk. Tule Lake also served as a "segregation center" for individuals and families who were deemed "disloyal" and for those who were to be deported to Japan.

List of camps

There were three types of camps. Civilian Assembly Centers were temporary camps, most located at horse tracks, where the Nikkei were sent as they were removed from their communities. Eventually, most were sent to Relocation Centers, also known as internment camps. Detention camps housed Nikkei considered to be disruptive or of special interest to the government.

Civilian Assembly Centers

• Centerville, California
• Eden, Idaho
• Fresno Assembly Center, California
• Hayward, California
• Los Angeles, California
• Marysville, California
• Mayer, Arizona
• Merced, California
• Mountain View, California
• Pinedale Assembly Center, California
• Pomona, California
• Portland, Oregon
• Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington (Informally known as "Camp Harmony")
• Sacramento, California
• Salinas, California
• Santa Anita Assembly Center, California
• San Francisco, California
• San Pedro, California
• Stockton, California
• Tanforan Assembly Center, California
• Terminal Island
• Tulare, California
• Turlock, California
• Woodland, California

List of internment camps

• Gila River War Relocation Center, Arizona
• Granada War Relocation Center, Colorado (AKA "Amache")
• Heart Mountain War Relocation Center, Wyoming
• Jerome War Relocation Center, Arkansas
• Manzanar War Relocation Center, California
• Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho
• Poston War Relocation Center, Arizona
• Rohwer War Relocation Center, Arkansas
• Topaz War Relocation Center, Utah
• Tule Lake War Relocation Center California

Justice Department detention camps

These camps often held German and Italian detainees in addition to Japanese Americans:

• Crystal City, Texas
• Fort Lincoln, North Dakota
• Fort Missoula, Montana
• Fort Stanton, New Mexico
• Kennedy, Texas
• Kooskia, Idaho
• Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Segoville, Texas

Citizen Isolation Centers

The Citizen Isolation Centers were for those consider to be problem inmates.

• Leupp, Arizona
• Moab, Utah (AKA Dalton Wells)
• Old Raton Ranch/Fort Stanton, New Mexico

Federal Bureau of Prisons

Detainees convicted of crimes, usually draft resistance, were sent to these camps:

• Catalina, Arizona
• Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
• McNeill Island, Washington

US Army facilities

These camps often help German and Italian detainees in addition to Japanese Americans:

• Angel Island/Fort McDowell
• Camp Blanding, Florida
• Camp Forrest
• Camp Livingston, Louisiana
• Camp Lordsburg, New Mexico
• Camp McCoy, Wisconsin
• Florence, Arizona
• Fort Bliss
• Fort Howard
• Fort Lewis
• Fort Meade
• Fort Richardson
• Fort Sam Houston
• Fort Sill, Oklahoma
• Griffith Park
• Honouliuli, Hawaii
• Sand Island, Hawaii
• Stringtown, Oklahoma

Exclusion, removal, and detention

Baggage of Japanese-Americans evacuated from certain West coast areas under United States Army war emergency order, who have arrived at a reception center at a racetrack.

Over 112,000 residents of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program. Of those, approximately two-thirds were U.S. citizens by birth. The remaining one-third were non-citizens legally subject to internment under the Alien Enemies Act. It is worth noting that the laws of the time prohibited naturalization of immigrants from Asian countries, so legal residents not born in the U.S. could not obtain citizenship.

This U.S. soldier of Japanese descent and American citizenship waits at a train station in Florin, CA. He, along with nine other servicemen, were granted furloughs from their service to return to the U.S. to assist with their families' relocation and internment. April 10 1942

Internees of Japanese descent were first sent to one of 17 temporary "Civilian Assembly Centers," where most awaited transfer to more permanent relocation centers being constructed by the newly-formed War Relocation Authority (WRA). Some of those who did report to the civilian assembly centers were not sent to relocation centers, but were released upon condition that they remain outside the prohibited zone until the military orders were modified or lifted. Almost 120,000 Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens would eventually be removed from their homes in California, the western halves of Oregon and Washington and southern Arizona as part of the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history.

Most of these camps/residences, gardens, and stock areas were placed on Native American reservations, for which the Native Americans were neither compensated nor consulted. The Native Americans consoled themselves that they might at least get the improvements made to the land, but at the end of the war such buildings and gardens were instead bulldozed or sold by the government.

Under the National Student Council Relocation Program (supported primarily by the American Friends Service Committee), students of college age were permitted to leave the camps in order to attend institutions which were willing to accept students of Japanese ancestry. Although the program initially granted leave permits to only a very small number of students, this eventually grew to 2,263 students by December 31 1943.

Los Angeles, California. Japanese-Americans going to Manzanar gather around a baggage car at the old Santa Fe Station. (April 1942)

Curfew and exclusion

The exclusion from Military Area No. 1 initially occurred through a voluntary relocation policy. Under the voluntary relocation policy, the Japanese Americans were free to go anywhere outside of the exclusion zone; however the arrangements and costs of relocation were borne by the individuals. The night-time curfew, initiated on 27 March 1942, was the first mass-action restricting the Japanese Americans.

Removal and detention

Most internees suffered significant property losses. Upon evacuation, the Japanese American internees were told that they could bring only as many articles of clothing, toiletries, and other personal effects as they could carry. The US government promised to find a place to store larger items (such as iceboxes and furniture) if boxed and labeled, but did not make any promises about the security of those items.

Conditions in the camps

According to a 1943 War Relocation Authority report, internees were housed in "tar paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." The spartan facilities met international laws, but still left much to be desired. Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living. In other areas, the internees had to build the barracks-like structures themselves.

Dust storm at Manzanar War Relocation Center.

A baseball game at Manzanar. Picture by Ansel Adams circa 1943.

To describe the conditions in more detail, the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in northwestern Wyoming was a barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for food rations. Because most internees were evacuated from their West Coast homes on short notice and not told of their destination, many failed to pack appropriate clothing for Wyoming winters which often reached temperatures below zero Fahrenheit. Many families were forced to simply take the "clothes on their backs."

Armed guards were posted at the camps, which were all in remote, desolate areas far from population centers. Internees were typically allowed to stay with their families, and were treated well unless they violated the rules. There are documented instances of guards shooting internees who reportedly attempted to walk outside the fences. One such shooting, that of James Wakasa at Topaz, led to a re-evaluation of the security measures in the camps. Some camp administrations eventually allowed relatively free movement outside the marked boundaries of the camps. Nearly a quarter of the internees left the camps to live and work elsewhere in the United States, outside the exclusion zone. Eventually, some were authorized to return to their hometowns in the exclusion zone under supervision of a sponsoring American family or agency whose loyalty had been assured.

The phrase "shikata ga nai" (loosely translated as "it cannot be helped") was commonly used to summarize the interned families' resignation to their helplessness throughout these conditions. This was even noticed by the children, as mentioned in Farewell to Manzanar. Although that may be the view to outsiders, the Japanese people tended to comply with the U.S. government to prove themselves "loyal citizens".

Loyalty questions and segregation

Some Japanese Americans did question their American loyalties after the government removed them and their families from their homes and held them in internment camps, although such cases were isolated incidents and did not reflect the larger sentiment of the Japanese-American people, who remained loyal to the United States. Several pro-Japan groups formed inside the camps, and demonstrations and riots occurred for various reasons in many camps, most notably Tule Lake, which caused the WRA to move "troublemaker" internees to Tule Lake. When the government asked whether internees wished to renounce their U.S. citizenship, 5,589 of them did so. Of those who renounced their citizenship, 1,327 were repatriated to Japan, although many of these deportees were not accepted by the Japanese Government. However, the American Civil Liberties Union successfully challenged most of these renunciations as invalid because of the conditions under which the government obtained them. These conditions were described as "coercion, duress, and mass compulsion" by Marvin Opler, a WRA official who had observed some of the renunciation hearings and supported the restoration of citizenship to the expatriated Japanese Americans. It is interesting to note that many of the deportees were Issei (first generation Japanese; immigrants) who often had difficulty with English and often did not understand the questions they were asked. Even among those Issei who had a clear understanding, Question 28 posed an awkward dilemma: Japanese immigrants were denied US citizenship at the time, so when asked to renounce their Japanese citizenship, answering "Yes" would have made them stateless persons. Faced with possible deportation to Japan, the Issei largely refused to renounce their only citizenship.

When the government circulated a questionnaire seeking army volunteers from among the internees, 6% of military-aged male respondents volunteered to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. Most of those who refused, however, tempered that refusal with statements of willingness to fight if they were restored their rights as American citizens. It is also important to note that there were 20,000 Japanese American men in the U.S. Army during World War II and many Japanese American women.

442nd Infantry Regiment Coat of Arms

The famed and highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team{Coat of Arms at Right}, which fought in Europe, was formed from those Japanese Americans who did agree to serve. This unit was the most highly decorated unit of its size and length. Most notably, the 442nd was known for saving the 141st (or the "lost battalion") from the Germans. The 1951 film Go For Broke! was a fairly accurate portrayal of the 442nd, and starred several of the RCT's veterans.

Other detention camps

As early as 1939, when war broke out in Europe and while armed conflict began to rage in East Asia, the FBI and branches of the Department of Justice and the armed forces began to collect information and surveillance on influential members of the Japanese community in the United States. This data was included in the Custodial Detention index ("CDI"). Agents in the Department of Justice's Special Defense Unit classified the subjects into three groups: A, B and C, with A being "most dangerous," and C being "possibly dangerous."

After the Pearl Harbor attacks, Roosevelt authorized his attorney general to put into motion a plan for the arrest of individuals on the potential enemy alien lists. Armed with a blanket arrest warrant, the FBI seized these men on the eve of December 8 1941. These men were held in municipal jails and prisons until they were moved to Department of Justice detention camps, separate from those of the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA). These camps operated under far more stringent conditions and were subject to heightened criminal-style guard, despite the absence of criminal proceedings.

Crystal City, Texas, was one such camp where Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans, and a large number of US-seized, Axis-descended nationals from several Latin-American countries were interned.

Canadian citizens with Japanese ancestry were also interned by the Canadian government during World War II (see Japanese Canadian internment). Japanese people from various parts of Latin America were brought to the United States for internment, or interned in their countries of residence.

Hawaii

Although there was a strong push from mainland Congressmen (Hawaii was only a US territory at the time, and did not have a voting representative or senator in Congress) to remove and intern all Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants from Hawaii, it never happened. In fact, only about 2,500 were interned, either in two camps on Oahu or in one of the mainland internment camps.

The vast majority of Japanese Americans and their immigrant parents in Hawaii were not interned because the Government had already declared martial law in Hawaii and this allowed it to significantly reduce the supposed risk of espionage and sabotage by residents of Japanese ancestry. Also, since these individuals comprised over 35% of the territory's population, it was not economically prudent to remove them. They were laborers in the sugar cane and pineapple fields and canneries, as well as merchants, restaurant owners, etc. In fact, scholarly research has shown that government and military officials realized that removing and interning all people of Japanese ancestry from Hawaii would ruin the territory's economy. This, and the fact that there was no real risk from the community identified, was a major factor in their decision that no mass removal and internment be instituted.

There were two internment camps in Hawaii, referred to as "Hawaiian Island Detention Camps". The Hawaiian camps primarily utilized tents and other temporary structures and few permanent structures. One camp was located at Sand Island, which is located in the middle of Honolulu Harbor. This camp was prepared in advance of the war's outbreak. All prisoners held here were "...detained under military custody...because of the imposition of martial law throughout the Islands... ." The other Hawaiian camp was called Honouliuli, near Ewa, on the southwestern shore of Oahu. This camp is not as well-known as the Sand Island camp, and it was closed before the Sand Island camp in 1944.

Internment ends

In December 1944 (Ex parte Endo), the Supreme Court ruled the detainment of loyal citizens unconstitutional, though in a decision handed down the same day (Korematsu v. United States) held that the exclusion process as a whole was constitutional.

In early 1945, the government began clearing individuals to return to the West Coast; on January 2 1945, the exclusion order was rescinded entirely. The internees then began to leave the camps to rebuild their lives at home, although the relocation camps remained open for residents who were not ready to make the move back. The freed internees were given $25 and a train ticket to their former home and sent on their way. Some of the Japanese Americans immigrated back to Japan, however the majority returned to their former lives, to the very place where they had been openly ostracized. The fact that this occurred long before the Japanese surrender, while the war was arguably at its most vicious, weighs against the claim that the relocation was an essential security measure. However, it is also true that the Japanese were clearly losing the war by that time, and were not on the offensive. The last internment camp was not closed until 1946, although all Japanese were cleared from the camps sometime in 1945.

One of the WRA camps, Manzanar, was designated a National Historic Site in 1992 to "provide for the protection and interpretation of historic, cultural, and natural resources associated with the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II" (Public Law 102-248). In 2001, the site of the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho was designated the Minidoka Internment National Monument.

Compensation, reparations, and redress

During World War II, Colorado governor Ralph Lawrence Carr was the only elected official to publicly apologize for the internment of American citizens. The act cost him reelection, but gained him the gratitude of the Japanese American community, such that a statue of him was erected in Sakura Square in Denver's Japantown.

Beginning in the 1960s, a younger generation of Japanese Americans who were inspired by the Civil Rights movement began what is known as the "Redress Movement", an effort to obtain an official apology and reparations from the federal government for interning their parents and grandparents during the war. The movement's first success was in 1976, when President Gerald Ford proclaimed that the evacuation was "wrong."

In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to study the matter. Some opponents of the redress movement argued that the commission was ideologically biased because 40% of the commission staff was of Japanese descent, and that some members of the commission had previously expressed opinions against the internment. In addition, opponents of the redress movement criticized the commission because the panel did not include military or intelligence experts. On February 24 1983, the commission issued a report entitled Personal Justice Denied, condemning the internment as "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity". Members of the redress movement and their allies considered the report a necessary recognition of the great injustice of the internment program. Opponents of the redress movement criticized the report for focusing on the civil liberties of Japanese Americans rather than the alleged security risks posed by Japanese Americans, and argued that no apology was necessary.

In 1988, U.S. President (and former California governor) Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which had been pushed through Congress by Representative Norman Mineta and Senator Alan K. Simpson — the two had met while Mineta was interned at a camp in Wyoming — which provided redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2 billion dollars. The question of to whom reparations should be given, how much, and even whether monetary reparations were appropriate were subjects of sometimes contentious debate.

In some cases, Japanese American farmers were able to find families who were willing to tend their farms for the duration of their internment. In other cases, however, Japanese American farmers had to sell their property in a matter of days, usually with great financial loss. In these cases, the land speculators who bought the land made huge profits. California's Alien Land Laws of the 1910s, which prohibited most non-citizens from owning property in that state, contributed to Japanese American property losses. Because they were barred from owning land, many older Japanese American farmers were tenant farmers and therefore lost their rights to those farm lands. To compensate these losses, the US Congress, on July 2 1948, passed the "American Japanese Claims Act", stating that all claims for war losses not presented within 18 months "shall be forever barred." Eventually, 26,568 settlements to family groups totaling more than $38 million were disbursed.

On September 27 1992, the Amendment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, appropriating an additional $400 million in order to ensure that all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, who also issued another formal apology from the U.S. government.

Redress

Main article: Japanese American redress and court cases

In the U.S., the right to redress is defined as a constitutional right, as it is decreed in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Redress may be defined as follows:

• 1. the setting right of what is wrong: redress of abuses.
• 2. relief from wrong or injury.
• 3. compensation or satisfaction from a wrong or injury.

Reparation is defined as:

• 1. the making of amends for wrong or injury done: reparation for an injustice.
• 2. Usually, reparations. compensation in money, material, labor, etc., payable by a defeated country to another country or to an individual for loss suffered during or as a result of war.
• 3. restoration to good condition.
• 4. repair. (“Legacies of Incarceration,” 2002)

The campaign for redress against illegal atrocities was launched by Japanese Americans in 1978. The Japanese American Citizens’ League (JACL) asked for three measures to be taken as redress: $25,000 to be awarded to each person who was detained, an apology from Congress acknowledging publicly that the U.S. government had been wrong, and the release of funds to set up an educational foundation for the children of Japanese American families. Under the 2001 budget of the United States, it was also decreed that the ten sites on which the detainee camps were set up are to be preserved as historical landmarks: “places like Manzanar, Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, Topaz, Amache, Jerome, and Rohwer will forever stand as reminders that this nation failed in its most sacred duty to protect its citizens against prejudice, greed, and political expediency” (Tateishi and Yoshino 2000). Each of these concentration camps was surrounded by barbed wire and contained at least ten thousand forced detainees.

According to Lowman and McCloy, the Commission addressing the need for reparations ignored the information collected in Lowman's book. The Commission was largely manned by those already disposed to favor compensation for the Japanese and others whose concern for political correctness outweighed their careful consideration of the facts.

Compensation for losses

Japanese and Japanese Americans who were relocated during WWII were compensated for direct property losses in 1948. Later on in 1988 following lobbying efforts by Japanese Americans, $20,000 per internee was paid out to individuals who had been interned or relocated, including those who chose to return to Japan.

John McCloy strongly opposed reparations, on the grounds that "it would be most unjust to all Americans, indeed, to all nationalities who suffered as a result of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, to have those who were affected by the President's order be further compensated for their removal from the sensitive military areas of the West Coast." McCloy specifically criticized the reparations investigations, arguing "the so-called investigation which sought to obtain unconscionably large unproven lump sums for added compensation for the relocation which had been given when evidence was fresh and witnesses were alive and in a position to testify was really outrageous. No serious attempt was made to recreate the conditions that the Japanese attack created on the West Coast, nor, the reasonableness of the steps that the President ordered to meet the devastating attack."

Severity of hardship

In April 1984, John J. McCloy claimed that the Japanese Americans "were permitted to go anywhere else in the country they saw fit to go at the expense of the government. They were not 'interned.'" McCloy added, "Generally speaking, I would say that our Japanese/American population benefited from the relocation rather than suffered, as did so many others of our population as a result of the war."

This point of view was not shared by the internees, however, most of whom lost irreplaceable personal property due to the restrictions on the amount which could be taken into the camps, combined with theft and destruction of items placed in storage with the government. A number of persons died or were permanently injured for lack of medical care, and several were killed by sentries (such as James Wakasa, killed at Topaz War Relocation Center near the perimeter wire). McCloy also failed to note that Nikkei were prohibited from leaving the Military Zones during the last few weeks before internment, and only able to leave the camps by permission of the camp administrators.

The psychological injury of the internment was noted by Dillon S. Myer, director of the WRA camps. In June 1945, Myer described how the Japanese Americans, once so enterprising and energetic, had grown increasingly obsessed with feelings of helplessness, personal insecurity, and inertia the longer they remained in camp.

Civil rights violations

Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." but gives this authority to Congress, rather than the President.

President Abraham Lincoln established the practice of suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. On February 19 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt followed in his footsteps by signing Executive Order 9066, permitting exclusion of persons from wartime military zones.

Following the reluctance or inability of the vast majority of ethnic Japanese to establish new residences beyond the coastal regions of California, Oregon, and Washington, the U.S. government entered upon a mission of housing, feeding, and safeguarding in family groups as many as 122,000 ethnic Japanese residing in what became the Red War Zone. In point of fact, a significant number of Japanese living outside of the coastal areas requested and were granted the opportunity of joining others of their ethnic group in the relocation centers.

Former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, who represented the US Department of Justice in the "relocation," writes in the Epilogue to the 1992 book Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans (written by Maisie & Richard Conrat):

The truth is—as this deplorable experience proves—that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves...Despite the unequivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both of these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066.

To this day, some believe that the legality of the internment has been firmly established as exactly the type of scenario spelled out, quite clearly, in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Among other things, the Alien Enemies Act (which was one of four laws included in the Alien and Sedition Acts) allowed for the United States government, during time of war, to apprehend and detain indefinitely foreign nationals, first-generation citizens, or any others deemed a threat by the government. As no expiration date was set, and the law has never been overruled, it was still in effect during World War II, and still is to this day. Therefore, some continue to claim that the civil rights violations were, in fact, not violations at all, having been deemed acceptable as a national security measure during time of war by Congress, signed into law by President John Adams, and upheld by the Supreme Court. However, the majority of the detainees were American-born, thus exempt under law from the Alien and Sedition Acts except if found to directly be a threat due to their actions or associations. This exemption was the basis for drafting Nisei to fight in Europe, as the Laws of Land Warfare prohibit signatory nations (including the United States) from compelling persons to act against their homelands or the allies of their homelands in time of war.

Legal legacy

Several significant legal decisions arose out of Japanese American internment, relating to the powers of the government to detain citizens in wartime. Among the cases which reached the Supreme Court were Yasui v. United States (1943), Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), ex parte Endo (1944), and Korematsu v. United States (1944). In Yasui and Hirabayashi the court upheld the constitutionality of curfews based on Japanese ancestry; in Korematsu the court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion order. In Endo, the court accepted a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and ruled that the WRA had no authority to subject a citizen whose loyalty was acknowledged to its procedures.

Korematsu's and Hirabayashi's convictions were vacated in a series of coram nobis cases in the early 1980s. In the coram nobis cases, federal district and appellate courts ruled that newly uncovered evidence revealed the existence of a huge unfairness which, had it been known at the time, would likely have changed the Supreme Court's decisions in the Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu cases. These new court decisions rested on a series of documents recovered from the National Archives showing that the government had altered, suppressed and withheld important and relevant information from the Supreme Court, most notably, the Final Report by General DeWitt justifying the internment program. The Army had destroyed documents in an effort to hide the fact that alterations had been made to the report. The coram nobis cases vacated the convictions of Korematsu and Hirabayashi (Yasui passed away before his case was heard, rendering it moot), and are regarded as one of the impetuses for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

It is important to note that the rulings of the US Supreme Court in the 1944 Korematsu and Hirabayashi cases, specifically, its expansive interpretation of government powers in wartime, were not overturned. They are still the law of the land because a lower court cannot overturn a ruling by the US Supreme Court. However, the coram nobis cases totally undermined the factual underpinnings of the 1944 cases, leaving the original decisions without the proverbial legal leg to stand on. But in light of the fact that these the 1944 decisions are still on the books, a number of legal scholars have expressed the opinion that the original Korematsu and Hirabayashi decisions have taken on an added relevance in the context of the War on terror.

Internees

• Robert Ito {Japanese Canadian Internee}
• Pat Morita
• Jack Soo
• George Takei

See also

• Anti-Japanese sentiment
• Anti-Japanese propaganda
• Gentlemen's Agreement
• Chinese Exclusion Act (United States)
• List of documentary films about the Japanese American internment
• 442nd Regimental Combat Team
• Japanese Canadian internment
• Sino-Japanese War
• Sanko sakusen
• Population transfer
• Population transfer in the Soviet Union
• Topaz, a 1945 documentary of the internment filmed by Dave Tatsuno in the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah.
• Farewell to Manzanar, a memoir by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston of her time spent in Manzanar. Jeanne, who was seven at the time of the relocation, had never lived around Asians other than her own family.
• To The Stars, autobiography of actor George Takei, including description of his time spent in Rohwer and Tule Lake internment camps, and the difficulties faced by his family as a result of the forced relocation.
• Back Home by Bill Mauldin (1947, Sloane), pages 165 - 170. Mauldin, the artist most famous for his "Willie and Joe" cartoons in the Army's Stars and Stripes newspaper, learned of the internment camps when meeting members of the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, both composed of Nisei volunteers, who were fighting in Europe. Following the war, Mauldin was an outspoken critic of the treatment given to the Japanese-Americans, both during and following the war. Several of his cartoons of the period, featured in this book, sharply address this issue.
• Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida (1982, University of Washington Press). Uchida's autobiography from the 1930s through the end of the internment. Her father was arrested by the FBI in the sweep of community leaders. The rest of her family were sent to Tanforan Racetrack (housed in horse stables), where her father eventually rejoined them, then later interned at Topaz War Relocation Center.
• Come See The Paradise, a 1990 film directed by Alan Parker, starring Tamlyn Tomita and Dennis Quaid.
• Snow Falling on Cedars, a David Guterson novel (made into a 1999 film) about a 1950s murder trial case with a Japanese American defendant. It shows the deep xenophobia toward people with Japanese ancestry, and depicts the internment camps.
• Day of Independence (2003), an Emmy-nominated half-hour PBS television special from Cedar Grove Productions, about a young Nisei baseball player and his separation from his parents while in camp.
• Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story (2004), a half-hour educational film from Visual Communications (VC) about the Mexican American citizen who voluntarily accompanied his Japanese American friends to Manzanar.
• Only the Brave (2005), independent film about the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, directed by Lane Nishikawa; includes portions depicting camp
• American Pastime (2007), a drama set in the Topaz War Relocation Center, in which the Topaz internees form a baseball team, eventually challenging the local minor league team to an important game.
• The Colonel and the Pacifist, by Klancy Clark de Nevers (2004, University of Utah Press). This book details the background of Karl Bendetsen, architect of the internment, raising questions about his honesty (including his concealment of his Jewish heritage) and motivation (having been raised in an area with a history of strong sentinment against Japanese Americans).
• When the Emperor was Divine (2002), by Julie Otsuka. A lean and evocative first novel of the internment of a Japanese-American family from Berkeley, CA and the resulting experiences.

External links

Archival sources of documents, photos, and other materials

• Beyond Barbed Wire: Japanese Internment through Salem Eyes — Statesman Journal presents videos, stories, photographs and documents.
• Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project — Video oral histories, historical photographs and documents.
• Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives — Hosted by the University of California and contains personal & official photographs, letters, diaries, transcribed oral histories, etc.
• Large number of documents — Official documents, including official court opinions on the Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu Supreme Court cases
• InternmentArchives.com — Online archive of primary source documentation regarding relocation; argues that internment was warranted (this site is sponsored by Athena Press, publisher one of whose products is a book supporting the internment).
• Pearl Harbor History Associates, Inc. — Their slogan is "Remembering Pearl Harbor. Keeping the record straight."
• Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar by Ansel Adams From the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress
• Born Free & Equal — High quality Library of Congress scans of the original 1944 edition of the book, with printed text and photographs by Ansel Adams.
• Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself — Photo gallery at U.S. Library of Congress.
• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Social Issues Photographs — 500 historical images from Western United States and the Pacific Northwest region covering political and social topics such as women's issues, labor and government, and ethnic groups with special emphasis on the Japanese internment camps in the Northwest during World War II.
• Letters from the Japanese American Internment — Correspondence between a librarian, Clara Breed, and young internees.
• German American Internee Coalition — Information on German American and Latin American citizens and legal residents who were interned by the United States during World War II.

Other sources

• Asian-Nation: Japanese American Internment
• A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution
• National Park Service; Confinment and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites.
• Friends of Minidoka
• 1992 signing
• Alien registration
• The Smith Act
• EO 9066
• Teaching about Japanese-American Internment
• Japanese American National Museum Q & A
• Japanese-American Internment Camps in Idaho and the West: 1942-1945
• The Internment of San Francisco Japanese
• Executive Order 9066 and the Residents of Santa Cruz County
• National Japanese American Memorial Foundation
• National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism in Washington, DC
• 60 years after his landmark Supreme Court battle, Fred Korematsu is fighting racial profiling of Arabs
• From a Silk Cocoon: A Documentary Film
• TULE LAKE RELOCATION CENTER by I. Fujimoto and D. Sunada

United States government documents

• Civilian Restrictive Order No. 1, 8 Fed. Reg. 982, provided for detention of those of Japanese ancestry in assembly or relocation centers.
• House Report No. 2124 (77th Cong., 2d Sess.) 247-52
• Hearings before the Subcommittee on the National War Agencies Appropriation Bill for 1945, Part II, 608-726
• Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (pg 309-327), by Lt. Gen. J. L. DeWitt. This report is dated June 5, 1943, but was not made public until January, 1944.
• Further evidence of the Commanding General's attitude toward individuals of Japanese ancestry is revealed in his voluntary testimony on April 13, 1943, in San Francisco before the House Naval Affairs Subcommittee to Investigate Congested Areas, Part 3, pp. 739-40 (78th Cong., 1st Sess.)
• Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, 78th Cong., 2d Sess., on H. R. 2701 and other bills to expatriate certain nationals of the United States, pp. 37-42, 49-58.
• 56 Stat. 173.
• 7 Fed. Reg. 2601
• House Report No. 1809, 84th Congress, 2d session, 9 (1956).
• Opler, Marvin in Tom C. Clark, Attorney General of the United States and William A. Carmichael, District Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Department of Justice, District 16 vs. Albert Yuichi Inouye, Miye Mae Murakami, Tsutako Sumi, and Mutsu Shimizu. No. 11839, United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. August 1947.
• Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Washington D.C., December, 1982

Further reading

• Drinnon, Richard. Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Meyer and American Racism. Berkeley and others: University of California Press, 1989.
• Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo. The Politics of Fieldwork: Research in an American Concentration Camp. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1999.
• Lange, Dorothy (2006). Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Mackey, Mackey, ed. Remembering Heart Mountain: Essays on Japanese American Internment in Wyoming. Wyoming: Western History Publications, 1998.
• Malkin, Michelle. In Defense of Internmnent: The Case For "Racial Profiling" In World War II and The War On Terror. Washington D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004.
• Miyakawa, Edward T. Tule Lake. Trafford Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-55369-844-4
• Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge and others: Harvard University Press, 2001.
• Weglyn, Michi. (1976, 1996). Years Of Infamy: The Untold Story Of America's Concentration Camps. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-97484-2. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
• Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. (1997). Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-97558-X.

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Archives and Records Administration.