The first Japanese living in the US and Japanese American citizens were sent to internment camps. They were up here in the PNW and the first arrivals came on March 20, 1942. It is eerie how similar our circumstances are at this point in history. It wasn’t until President Regan that the US government made any formal apology.
Fascinating read on Wikipedia. Read the full article.
Selected excerpts which I found particularly interesting and relevant.
President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, 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 orders, while noting that the provisions that singled out people of Japanese ancestry were a separate issue outside the scope of the proceedings.
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Reportedly, “within weeks of Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Command, requested approval to conduct search and seizure operations to prevent alien Japanese from making radio transmissions to Japanese ships.” “The Justice Department refused, however, to seek the warrant without probable cause, the FBI concluded that the security threat was only a perceived one in January, the FCC reported that the Army’s fears were groundless.”
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Knowing that “public opinion would not support the direction of the Justice Department and the FBI, however DeWitt was undeterred.” By January 2, “the Joint Immigration Committee of the California Legislature sent a manifesto to California newspapers summing up ‘the historical catalogue of charges against the ethnic Japanese,’ who, said the manifesto, were ‘totally unassimilable.’” “The manifesto declared that all of Japanese descent were loyal to the Emperor, and attacked Japanese language schools as teaching Japanese racial superiority.” “The committee had the support of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West and the California Department of the American Legion, which in January demanded that all Japanese with dual citizenship be ‘placed in concentration camps’.” It was feared that this population might commit acts of espionage or sabotage for the Japanese military.citation needed] Internment, however, was never limited to those who had been to Japan, but “included a smaller number of German and Italian enemy aliens suspected of disloyalty.” By February, “Earl Warren, at the time Attorney General of California, and U.S. Webb, a former Attorney General, were vigorously seeking to persuade the federal government to remove all ethnic Japanese from the west coast.”
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Civilian and military officials had concerns about the loyalty of the ethnic Japanese on the West Coast and considered them to be potential security risks, although these concerns in some cases may have come more from racial bias than actual risk. Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt each questioned Japanese American loyalty. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that “A Jap’s a Jap” and testified to Congress,
I don’t want any of them 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.
Those that were as little as 1/16th Japanese could be placed in internment camps. There is some evidence supporting the argument that the measures were racially motivated, rather than a military necessity. For example, orphaned infants with “one drop of Japanese blood” (as explained in a letter by one official) were included in the program.