Japanese American incarceration
A hundred and twenty thousand people, two in three born American
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In February 1942, President Roosevelt gave the army authority to designate military zones and remove anyone from them. The Supreme Court upheld the incarceration in Korematsu v. United States in 1944, a ruling that stood for over seventy years before being formally repudiated in 2018. A commission concluded in 1983 that the measure had no military justification but arose from racial prejudice and a failure of political leadership, and the United States issued an official apology and redress in 1988. Canada did likewise in 1988. Property sold under compulsion was never returned.
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After the attack on Pearl Harbor, everyone of Japanese descent on the west coast was forced from their homes into camps. Two in three were American citizens. Canada did the same. None was ever convicted of espionage.
Sources
- Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied (1983)
- Civil Liberties Act (1988)
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