With baggage stacked, residents of Japanese ancestry await buses at the Wartime Civil Control Administration station, 2020 Van Ness Avenue, as part of the first group of 664 to be evacuated from San Francisco on April 6, 1942. Courtesy of the National Archives, photo no. 210-G-A92.
In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government immediately arrested people they considered “potentially dangerous enemy aliens” under Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527. The term “internment” refers to the legally permissible, though morally questionable, detention of “enemy aliens” in times of war. Based on these proclamations, the federal government arrested nearly 8,000 individuals across the U.S. and its territories, including World War II-era internees sent to Angel Island.
An additional 120,000 people, two-thirds of them American citizens, were removed from their homes after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. While sometimes thought of as internees, this group is more accurately referred to as being incarcerated. Both foreign- and U.S.-born Japanese Americans experienced forced removal and incarceration under the control of the War Relocation Authority (WRA). None of those affected by Executive Order 9066 were sent to Angel Island.
Civilian Exclusion Orders, signed at the Presidio, led to the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. San Francisco. April 11, 1942. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, photo no. LC-USZ62-34565.
By issuing Executive Order 9066, the U.S. government ignored internal reports that Japanese Americans were not a threat to national security.
Adults and children were forcibly evicted and removed from their homes and businesses. This included citizens and non-citizens. They were given as little as ten days to prepare and could only take what they were able to carry.
It is estimated that Japanese Americans lost $1-3 billion in property during their incarceration. This amount is based on the dollar value in 1943 and would be many times larger when adjusted for inflation today.
Thirty years after WWII, in a symbolic ceremony, President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order 9066 in 1976. Around this time, the “Redress Movement” gained momentum in the Japanese American community. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed an act to establish the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). In 1982, the CWRIC completed its fact-finding task and published its report: Personal Justice Denied, which concluded the causes of forced internment were “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”
This report became the factual underpinning for the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan. The act provided a letter of apology from the President of the United States and a redress check for $20,000 to each of the eligible surviving internees from the War Relocation Authority camps.
President Gerald Ford signs a proclamation confirming the termination of Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1976). Courtesy of the National Archives.
