The Incarceration of Japanese Americans in WW II

Video from Vox

"Dorothea Lange’s photos of the incarceration of Japanese Americans went largely unseen for decades.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 — two months after Japan’s bombing of the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor. It empowered the US army to designate strategic “military areas” from which any and all people deemed a threat could be forcibly removed. This began a process of placing 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. To control the narrative around the removal, the government created a new department, the War Relocation Authority, and hired photographers to document the process. One of those photographers was Dorothea Lange, who had become famous during the 1930s for her Great Depression photographs for the Farm Security Administration. Her images featured Japanese-American people in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to their incarceration in the camps, and captured expressions of dignity, resolve, and fear. Most of Lange’s candid photos of the removal process weren’t approved for publication by the War Relocation Authority and were “impounded” for the duration of the war. They weren’t seen again widely until 1972, when her former assistant pulled them from the National Archives for a museum exhibit about the incarceration of Japanese Americans, called Executive Order 9066. The photos became part of a redress movement for Japanese Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, which ultimately resulted in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a bill that approved reparations for survivors of the camps." from video introduction.

American has a long list of persecution of strangers and foreigners! Beginning with Native American Genocide, slavery, Discrimination against blacks, the Japanese in WW2 to name but a few.

What have we learned from these gross injustices?

Have we repented? - Andy

Guilty by Reason of Race

"On August 10, 1988, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. "The Act was passed by Congress to provide a Presidential apology and symbolic payment of $20,000 to the internees, evacuees, and persons of Japanese ancestry who lost liberty or property because of discriminatory action by the Federal government during World War II" (Department of Justice 1).." from the article: The Civil Liberties Act of 1988

"A fifth column is a group of people residing in a given country who work to actively support a wartime enemy of that country from within by engaging in espionage or sabotage or who engage in such activities in anticipation of war. The term derives from the Spanish Civil War.

There were two notable instances of fifth column accusations aimed at Japanese Americans. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox journeyed to the islands and subsequently made the infamous statement, "I think the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii with the exception of Norway." [1] Despite J. Edgar Hoover's later denial of such activity—and the subsequent lack of any evidence to corroborate Knox's assertion—the charges stuck. The subsequent Roberts Commission Report also failed to contradict these charges.

Later, in February 1942, influential syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann wrote a column titled " The Fifth Column on the Coast " based on his discussions with California Attorney General Earl Warren that repeated Knox's charges and that cast doubt on Nisei as well as Issei . The fifth column specter raised by both of these instances—despite the lack of any actual evidence to suspect Japanese Americans—contributed to the climate that culminated in Executive Order 9066 .." from the article: Fifth Column