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7 - Hard to Adjust After all that

Grace, Interned Japanese-American Teenager

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2014

Kristen Renwick Monroe
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Chloe Lampros-Monroe
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Jonah Pellecchia
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

America entered World War II after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii – not yet a state – on December 7, 1941. Concerned about invasion and terrorism on the part of Japanese living in the United States, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, empowering local military commanders to set aside “military areas” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” In effect, Executive Order 9006 declared the entire Pacific coast off limits to people of Japanese ancestry. The only exemptions were internment camps. Approximately 110,000 Japanese-Americans living along the Pacific coast and over 150,000 living in Hawaii (over one-third of Hawaii's population) thus were relocated and interned by the U.S. government in 1942. These Japanese-Americans – over 62% being U.S. citizens – were settled in what were called War Relocation Camps. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional legitimacy of the exclusion orders in 1944. Although it denied it for years, in 2007 the U.S. Census Bureau was found to have helped in this internment by giving confidential information on Japanese-Americans. It was not until 1988 that Congress passed legislation, signed by President Reagan, acknowledging and apologizing for the internment, admitting the internments were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” More than $1.6 billion of reparations were eventually disbursed to the internees and their heirs.

Type
Chapter
Information
A Darkling Plain
Stories of Conflict and Humanity during War
, pp. 116 - 130
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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