We recently marked the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, which ordered Japanese Americans to leave their property and move to relocation centers. These may also be known as internment camps, incarceration camps, or relocation camps. Most of them were in desert areas. People had only a few days to settle their effects, and most lost their homes and businesses. They were forced to live in barbed-wire fenced camps, in tents or rudimentary cabins ill-suited for the extreme heat and cold of the desert. They also had armed guards, with the guns trained on the people in the camps.
Pearl Harbor had taken place 3 months prior, and anti-Japanese hysteria was reaching new heights in the United States. Unlike people of German and Italian descent who had better chances of passing as anglicized white people(my family is a case in point,) Japanese Americans couldn't just change the spelling of their name or work on an accent to pretend they were white. There wasn't then, and there isn't now, any evidence of espionage or plans to participate in acts against the US from with, but Roosevelt caved to racism and signed EO 9066 anyway.
Over 127,000 American citizens had their civil rights violated from this executive order. While small amounts of money were given as reparations from the US government over the years, it still doesn't make up for the hatred that motivated it. Especially knowing how many homes and businesses were taken over by the same white people demanding they be locked up, and were never returned after the war.
There is so much information on this online, and there are a bunch more youtube videos, and movies and books about the time we interned our own citizens. If you haven't heard of this before, a good book to start with is, Farewell to Manzanar. Here are so other links, too.
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