Sunday, February 19, 2006

1942: WAR ON TERROR

Today marks the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which set about events that placed 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, including American Citizens, into "relocation camps". Included were my grandparents, uncle and bun-in-the-oven father, as well as other relatives. Some of my relatives were in the camps, while their husbands & fathers were in the U.S. Military fighting in WWII defending the very freedoms that were being taken away back home. Let us never forget and teach new generations of this terrible time in US History, to avoid similar acts happening in the Future.Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on Feb 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted the military to circumvent the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense.

The order set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.

These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

They were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family members were separated and put into different camps. President Roosevelt himself called the 10 facilities "concentration camps."

Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders.

At the time, Executive Order 9066 was justified as a "military necessity" to protect against domestic espionage and sabotage. However, it was later documented that "our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage." (Michi Weglyn, 1976).

Learn more here.

2 comments:

spaceJASE said...

Things like this are an embarrassment for the US. I've heard people say they thought the government did it to protect the Japanese Americans from the inevitable persecution they would have suffered from the general public. Seems like blatant racism to me - they didn't lock up all the German Americans did they!?!?

It's good to remember these mistakes - "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

With the recent fanaticism on terror, I'm surprised the Bush cronies haven't set up "concentration camps" for Muslims... oh wait, I forgot Guantanamo Bay. Maybe that doesn't count because it's on foreign communist soil? (sarcasm there, folks)

Anonymous said...

U.N. say GITMO gotta go!
Then there is the case of my buddy's mother-inlaw. Maris Terada was a little girl on an Hawian island the day of Pearl Harbor. Her father was at sea fishing trying to make a living, The US forces killed the other 4 guys on board he was injured and recovered... Maris says the FBI watched the Japanese while the war went on....not a state yet...no internment... Maris would like reperations just the same...