Background to Japanese American Incarceration History, in brief

Japanese Americans began arriving in the United States in large numbers in the late 1880s. Many were recruited to work on sugar and pineapple plantations in the Kingdom of Hawai’i; others came to work in agriculture on the West Coast of the continent, to help construct railroads across the Mountain West, or came into the U.S. through Canada or Mexico. In many cases, especially in Hawai’i, Japanese laborers were recruited to fill the need for cheap labor created by anti-Chinese sentiment and legislation, like the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. Most early Japanese migrants were men and did not necessarily intend to remain in the United States. Many dreamed of earning their fortunes and returning to Japan. 

Japanese in the U.S. entered into an environment that was virulently anti-Asian. In the face of Alien Land Laws and school segregation efforts, Japanese migrants put down roots and built communities. In the early decades of the 20th century, the second generation of Japanese Americans entered the scene—the Nisei, American-born and therefore birthright U.S. citizens. With the arrival of the Nisei, their parents became the “Issei,” the first generation.  

On December 7, 1941, imperial Japan attacked the U.S. military installation at Pearl Harbor. In the hours following the attack, the FBI rounded up Japanese language teachers, Buddhist and Shinto priests, and other community leaders, in Hawai’i, Alaska, and across the continent. Many of these men (and a few women) were held at local jails before being sent to Department of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization Services internment camps. Pearl Harbor was a catalyst; it was not the beginning of anti-Japanese sentiment on the continent and in the territories. 

In the weeks following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans across the United States, Japanese American families, communities, and individuals faced violence, uncertainty, and fear. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate “military areas” from which any person could be excluded. Beginning in March 1942, the army encouraged so-called “voluntary evacuation.” This ended on March 24, 1942, when the army issued the first of 108 Civilian Exclusion Orders, ordering the forced removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from Bainbridge Island, WA. By early summer 1942, every Japanese American community on the West Coast had been removed by the army and incarcerated first in temporary detention centers called “Assembly Centers” and then in more permanent incarceration camps spread across the U.S. interior, run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA).  

Japanese Americans began “resettling” out of the camps in early 1943, once the government established a way to determine “loyalty.” Some Japanese American men joined volunteers from Hawai’i to serve in a segregated army combat team; others chose to refuse the draft in protest. Gradually, some Issei who had been arrested by the FBI immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor were able to rejoin their families in the WRA camps. 

The last camp closed on February 27, 1948 (read more about Crystal City here). After decades of community rebuilding and reckoning with intergenerational trauma and silence, the Japanese American redress movement emerged in the wake of the Black freedom struggle and the Asian American movement. 

As a result of multifaceted community organizing and legislative maneuvering, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 on August 10, 1988. The Civil Liberties Act granted a presidential apology and reparations money to living survivors of the wartime prison camps and included Native Alaskans who were also forcibly removed from their homes and imprisoned during the war. While redress provided much needed community support and healing for many—and continues to support memory work like Seeing Memory!—it excluded many, including most Japanese Latin Americans, some of whom were kidnapped from their home countries and incarcerated in the United States during the war. The fight for justice continues.