View source for Internment of Japanese Americans

{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2012}}
{{Infobox historical event
  |Event_Name     = Japanese American Exclusion and Internment 
  |Image_Name     = Map of World War II Japanese American internment camps.png
  |Image_Alt      = 
  |Image_Caption  = Internment camps and further institutions of the War Relocation Authority in the western United States.
  |Thumb_Time     = 
  |AKA            = 
  |Participants   =
  |Location       = [[United States]]
  |Date           = February 19, 1942–1946<ref name="arizona.edu">{{cite web | title=War Relocation Camps in Arizona 1942-1946| work=| url=http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/wracamps/| accessdate=October 2, 2012}}</ref>
  |nongregorian   = 
  |Deaths        = 
  |Result         = 
  |URL            = 
}}

The '''internment of Japanese Americans''' in the [[United States]] was the forced relocation and incarceration during [[World War II]] of between 110,000 and 120,000<ref name=howmany>Various primary and secondary sources list counts between persons.</ref> people of [[Japanese American|Japanese ancestry]] who lived on the Pacific coast in camps in the interior of the country. Sixty-two percent of the internees were [[Citizenship in the United States|United States citizens]].<ref>''Semiannual Report of the War Relocation Authority, for the period January 1 to June 30, 1946,'' not dated. Papers of [[Dillon S. Myer]]. [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/documents/index.php?pagenumber=4&documentid=62&documentdate=1946-00-00&collectionid=JI&nav=ok Scanned image at] trumanlibrary.org. Retrieved September 18, 2006.</ref><ref name=trumanlib_1948>"The War Relocation Authority and The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II: 1948 Chronology," [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/1948.htm Web page] at www.trumanlibrary.org. Retrieved September 11, 2006.</ref> The U.S. government ordered the removal of Japanese Americans in 1942, shortly after [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]]'s [[attack on Pearl Harbor]].<ref>National Park Service. [http://www.nps.gov/manz/ Manzanar National Historic Site]</ref>

Such incarceration was applied unequally due to differing population concentrations and, more importantly, state and regional politics: more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, nearly all who lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in [[Territory of Hawaii|Hawaii]], where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned.<ref name="Ogawa, Dennis M 1991, page 135">Ogawa, Dennis M. and Fox, Jr., Evarts C. ''Japanese Americans, from Relocation to Redress''. 1991, page 135.</ref> The forced relocation and incarceration has been determined to have resulted more from racism and discrimination among whites on the West Coast, rather than any military danger posed by the Japanese Americans.

[[President of the United States|President]] [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] authorized the deportation and incarceration with [[Executive Order 9066]], issued February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military  commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire West Coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in government camps.<ref name=korematsu_roberts>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=323&page=214 ''Korematsu v. United States''] dissent by Justice [[Owen Josephus Roberts]], reproduced at findlaw.com. Retrieved September 12, 2006.</ref> Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans voluntarily relocated outside the exclusion zone,<ref name='Voluntary evacuation'>Brian Niiya. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Voluntary_evacuation/ "Voluntary evacuation,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved March 12, 2014.</ref> and some 5,500 community leaders arrested after Pearl Harbor were already in custody,<ref name=Densho-about>Densho, [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/history/ "About the Incarceration."]</ref> but the majority of mainland Japanese Americans were evacuated (forcibly relocated) from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942. The [[United States Census Bureau]] assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau denied its role for decades, but this was finally proven in 2007.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II|url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=confirmed-the-us-census-b&sc=I100322|publisher=Scientific American|author=JR Minkel|date=March 30, 2007|postscript=<!--None-->}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-30-census-role_N.htm|title=Papers show Census role in WWII camps|work=USA Today |author=Haya El Nasser|date=March 30, 2007|postscript=<!--None-->}}</ref> In 1944, the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] upheld the constitutionality of the removal by ruling against [[Korematsu v. United States|Fred Korematsu]]'s appeal for violating an exclusion order.<ref name=korematsu_majority>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=323&invol=214 ''Korematsu v. United States''] majority opinion by Justice [[Hugo Black]], reproduced at findlaw.com. Retrieved September 11, 2006</ref>  The Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, avoiding the issue of the incarceration of U.S. citizens with no due process.<ref>{{cite book | last = Hakim | first = Joy | title = A History of Us: War, Peace and all that Jazz | publisher=Oxford University Press | year = 1995 | location = New York | pages = 100–104 | isbn = 0-19-509514-6 }}</ref>

In 1980, under mounting pressure from the [[Japanese American Citizens League]] and redress organizations,<ref name='CLA1988-Yamato'>Sharon Yamato. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Civil_Liberties_Act_of_1988/ "Civil Liberties Act of 1988,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved March 11, 2014.</ref> President [[Jimmy Carter]] opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into internment camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the [[Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians]] (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The Commission's report, titled ''“Personal Justice Denied,”'' found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and, concluding the incarceration had been the product of racism, recommended that the government pay [[reparation (legal)|reparation]]s to the survivors. In 1988, President [[Ronald Reagan]] signed into law  the [[Civil Liberties Act of 1988|Civil Liberties Act]], which apologized for the internment on behalf of the [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. government]] and authorized a payment of $20,000 to each individual camp survivor. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".<ref>100th Congress, S. 1009, [http://www.internmentarchives.com/showdoc.php?docid=00055&search_id=19269&pagenum=2 reproduced at], internmentarchives.com. Retrieved September 19, 2006.</ref>  The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6&nbsp;billion in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been interned and their [[wikt:heir|heirs]].<ref name='CLA1988-Yamato'/><ref name="democracynow">{{cite web|url=http://www.democracynow.org/1999/2/18/wwii_reparations_japanese_american_internees |title=Wwii Reparations: Japanese-American Internees |publisher=Democracy Now! |accessdate=January 24, 2010}}</ref>

Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast.<ref>Okihiro, Gary Y. ''The Columbia Guide to Asian American History''. 2005, page 104</ref> About 80,000 were ''[[nisei]]'' (literal translation: "second generation"; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and ''[[sansei]]'' ("third generation"; the children of Nisei). The rest were ''[[issei]]'' ("first generation", immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship by US law).<ref>Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey, John R. Howe, Peter J. Frederick, Allen F. Davis, Allan M. Winkler, Charlene Mires, and Carla Gardina Pestana. ''The American People, Concise Edition Creating a Nation and a Society'', Combined Volume (6th Edition). New York: Longman, 2007</ref>

==Japanese Americans before World War II==
{{Further|Japanese American history}}
Due in large part to socio-political changes stemming from the [[Meiji Restoration]] — and a recession caused by the abrupt [[opening of Japan]]'s economy to the world market — people began migrating from Japan in 1868 to find work to survive.<ref name=Anderson-Immigration>Anderson, Emily. "[http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration/ Immigration]," ''Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 14, 2014.</ref>{{Better source|date=February 2015}} From 1869 to 1924 approximately 200,000 immigrated to the islands of Hawaii, mostly laborers arriving to work on the islands' [[Hawaiian sugar plantations|sugar plantations]]. Some 180,000 went to the U.S. mainland, with the majority settling on the West Coast and establishing farms or small businesses.<ref name=Densho-about/> Most arrived before 1908, when the [[Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907|Gentlemen's Agreement]] between Japan and the United States banned the immigration of unskilled laborers. A loophole allowed the wives of men already in the country to join their husbands. The practice of women marrying by proxy and immigrating to the U.S. resulted in a large increase of "[[picture bride]]s" and, soon after, children.<ref name=Anderson-Immigration/><ref name='picture brides'>Nakamura, Kelli Y. "[http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Picture_brides/]," ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved August 14, 2014.</ref>{{Better source|date=February 2015}}

As the Japanese American population continued to grow, European Americans on the West Coast resisted the new group, fearing competition and exaggerating the idea of hordes of Asians keen to take over white-owned farmland and businesses. Groups such as the [[Exclusion League|Japanese Exclusion League]], the [[California Joint Immigration Committee]], and the [[Native Sons of the Golden West]] organized in response to this "[[Yellow Peril]]" and lobbied successfully to restrict the property and citizenship rights of Japanese immigrants, as similar groups had previously organized against Chinese immigrants.<ref name='Anti-Japanese exclusion movement'>Anderson, Emily. "[http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Anti-Japanese%20exclusion%20movement/ Anti-Japanese exclusion movement]," ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved August 14, 2014.</ref> Several laws and treaties attempting to slow immigration from Japan were introduced beginning in the late 19th century. The [[Immigration Act of 1924]], following the example of the 1882 [[Chinese Exclusion Act]], effectively banned all immigration from Japan and other "undesirable" Asian countries.

The 1924 ban on immigration produced unusually well-defined generational groups within the Japanese American community. The [[Issei]] were exclusively those who had immigrated before 1924; some retained longings to return to their homeland. Because no new immigration was permitted, all Japanese Americans born after 1924 were, by definition, born in the U.S. and automatically U.S. citizens. This [[Nisei]] generation were a distinct cohort from their parents. In addition to the usual generational differences, Issei men were typically ten to fifteen years older than their wives, making them significantly older than the younger children of their often large families.<ref name='picture brides'/> U.S. law prohibited Japanese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens, making them dependent on their children to rent or purchase property. Communication between English-speaking children and parents who spoke mostly or completely in Japanese was often difficult. A significant number of older Nisei, many of whom were born prior to the immigration ban, had married and already started families of their own by the outbreak of World War II.<ref>{{Cite book|title = Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide|last = Ng|first = Wendy|publisher = Greenwood|year = 2002|isbn = |location = Westport, CT|pages = 8–9}}</ref>

Despite racist legislation that prevented Issei from becoming naturalized citizens (and therefore from [[Alien land laws|owning property]], voting, or running for political office), these Japanese immigrants established communities in their new hometowns. Japanese Americans contributed to the agriculture of California and other Western states, by introducing irrigation methods that enabled the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, and flowers on previously inhospitable land. In both rural and urban areas, ''kenjinkai'', community groups for immigrants from the same [[Japanese prefecture]], and ''[[Buddhist Women's Association|fujinkai]]'', Buddhist women's associations, organized community events and charitable work, provided loans and financial assistance, and built [[Japanese language education in the United States|Japanese language schools]] for their children. Excluded from setting up shop in white neighborhoods, [[Japanese diaspora|Nikkei]]-owned small businesses thrived in the ''[[Japantown|Nihonmachi]]'', or Japantowns of urban centers such as [[Los Angeles]], [[San Francisco]], and [[Seattle]].

In the 1930s the [[Office of Naval Intelligence]], concerned by Imperial Japan's rising military power in the East, began conducting surveillance on Japanese American communities in Hawaii. From 1936, at the behest of President Roosevelt, the ONI began compiling a "special list of those who would be the first to be placed in a concentration camp in the event of trouble" between Japan and the United States. In 1939, again by order of the President, the ONI, [[Military Intelligence Division (United States)|Military Intelligence Division]], and [[FBI]] began working together to compile a larger [[FBI Index#Custodial Detention Index|Custodial Detention Index]].<ref name=Kashima-ABClist>Kashima, Tetsuden. "[http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Custodial%20detention%20/%20A-B-C%20list/ Custodial detention / A-B-C list]," ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved August 14, 2014.</ref> Early in 1941, Roosevelt commissioned [[Munson Report|Charles Munson]] to conduct an investigation on Japanese Americans living on the West Coast and in Hawaii. After working with FBI and ONI officials and interviewing Japanese Americans and those familiar with them, Munson determined that the "Japanese problem" was nonexistent. His final report to the President, submitted November 7, 1941, "certified a remarkable, even extraordinary degree of loyalty among this generally suspect ethnic group."<ref>Weglyn, Michi Nishiura. ''Years of Infamy'' (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1976) p34.</ref> A subsequent report by [[Kenneth Ringle]], delivered to the President in January 1942, also found little evidence to support claims of Japanese American disloyalty and argued against mass incarceration.<ref name=Niiya-Ringle>Niiya, Brian. "[http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Kenneth%20Ringle/ Kenneth Ringle]," ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved August 14, 2014.</ref>

==After Pearl Harbor==
[[File:Newspaper headlines of Japanese Relocation - NARA - 195535.jpg|thumb|San Francisco Examiner, February 1942.]]

[[Image:JapaneseAmericanGrocer1942.jpg|thumb|A Japanese American unfurled this banner the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. This [[Dorothea Lange]] photograph was taken in March 1942, just prior to the man's internment.]]

[[File:JapaneseAmericansChildrenPledgingAllegiance1942-2.jpg|thumb|Children at the Weill public school in San Francisco [[pledge of allegiance|pledge allegiance]] to the [[American flag]] in April 1942, prior to the internment of Japanese Americans.]]

[[File:Russell Lee, Tagged for evacuation, Salinas, California, May 1942.jpg|thumb|Taken by [[Russell Lee (photographer)|Russell Lee]], this photograph is labeled "Tagged for evacuation, [[Salinas, California]], May 1942".]]

The [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] on December 7, 1941 led military and political leaders to suspect that [[Imperial Japan]] was preparing a [[Mainland invasion of the United States|full-scale attack on the West Coast of the United States]]. Due to Japan's [[Pacific War#Japanese Blitzkrieg|rapid military conquest]] of a large portion of Asia and the Pacific between 1936 and 1942, some Americans feared that its military forces were unstoppable.

American public opinion initially stood by the large population of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, with the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' characterizing them as "good Americans, born and educated as such." Many Americans believed that their loyalty to the United States was unquestionable.<ref>{{cite book | author=Irons, Peter. | title=Justice At War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases | publisher=University of Washington Press | year=1993 | pages=7–9}}</ref>

But, six weeks after the attack, public opinion along the Pacific began to turn against Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, as the press and other Americans became nervous about the potential for [[fifth column]] activity. Though the administration (including the President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]]) dismissed all rumors of Japanese-American espionage on behalf of the Japanese War effort, pressure mounted upon the Administration as the tide of public opinion turned against Japanese Americans. Civilian and military officials had serious concerns about the loyalty of the ethnic Japanese after the [[Niihau Incident]] which immediately followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, when a civilian Japanese national and two Hawaiian-born ethnic Japanese on the island of Ni'ihau violently freed a downed and captured Japanese naval airman, attacking their fellow Ni'ihau islanders in the process.<ref>{{cite book
  | last = Prange
  | first = Gordon W
  | authorlink = Gordon Prange
  | year = 1962
  | title = December 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor
  | publisher = McGraw Hill
  | location = New York
  | ref = harv
  | pp=375–77 
  }}</ref>

Several concerns over the loyalty of ethnic Japanese seemed to stem from [[racial prejudice]] rather than any evidence of malfeasance. Major [[Karl Bendetsen]] and Lieutenant General [[John L. DeWitt]], head of the Western Command, each questioned Japanese-American loyalty. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that "A Jap's a Jap" and testified to Congress,

{{quotation|I don't want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.<ref>Fred Mullen, "DeWitt Attitude on Japs Upsets Plans," ''Watsonville Register-Pajaronian'', April&nbsp;16,&nbsp;1943. p.1, reproduced by [http://web.archive.org/web/20070928001103/http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/ww2/9066/articles/rp/43/4-16.shtml Santa Cruz Public Library]. Retrieved September 11, 2006.</ref><ref>Testimony of John L. DeWitt, April 13, 1943, House Naval Affairs Subcommittee to Investigate Congested Areas, Part 3, pp. 739–40 (78th Cong ., 1st Sess.), cited in [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=323&invol=214#fff1 ''Korematsu v. United States (Murphy, J., dissenting)'', footnote 2], reproduced at findlaw.com. Retrieved September 11, 2006.</ref>
}}

DeWitt also sought approval to conduct search and seizure operations aimed at preventing alien Japanese from making radio transmissions to Japanese ships.<ref name="Taslitz">Andrew E. Taslitz, "Stories of Fourth Amendment Disrespect: From Elian to the Internment," 70 ''Fordham Law Review''. 2257, 2306–07 (2002).</ref> The Justice Department declined, stating that there was no [[probable cause]] to support DeWitt's assertion, as the FBI concluded that there was no security threat.<ref name="Taslitz"/> On January 2, the Joint Immigration Committee of the California Legislature sent a manifesto to California newspapers which attacked "the ethnic Japanese," who it alleged were "totally unassimilable."<ref name="Taslitz"/> This manifesto further argued that all people of Japanese heritage were loyal subjects of the [[Emperor of Japan]]; the manifesto contended that Japanese language schools were bastions of racism which advanced doctrines of Japanese racial superiority.<ref name="Taslitz"/>

The manifesto was backed by the [[Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West]] and the California Department of the [[American Legion]], which in January demanded that all Japanese with [[dual citizenship]] be placed in concentration camps.<ref name="Taslitz"/> Internment was not limited to those who had been to Japan, but included a very small number of [[German-American internment|German]] and [[Italian-American internment|Italian]] enemy aliens.<ref name="Taslitz"/> By February, [[Earl Warren]], the [[Attorney General of California]], had begun his efforts to persuade the federal government to remove all people of Japanese ethnicity from the West Coast.<ref name="Taslitz"/>

Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese could be placed in internment camps.<ref name="Short History of Amache Japanese Internment Camp">{{cite web|url=http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/wwcod/granada3.htm|title=''Short History of Amache Japanese Internment''|accessdate=April 21, 2008}}</ref> There is evidence supporting the argument that the measures were racially motivated, rather than a military necessity. Bendetsen, promoted to colonel, said in 1942 "I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp."<ref name="SmithsonianAMPU">[http://amhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/non-flash/removal_process.html ''Removal process], A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution,'' [[Smithsonian Institution]].</ref>

Upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor and pursuant to the [[Alien and Sedition Acts|Alien Enemies Act]], Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526 and 2527 were issued designating Japanese, [[German-American internment|German]] and [[Italian-American internment|Italian]] nationals as enemy aliens.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/enemy-aliens-overview.html|title=''Brief Overview of the World War II Enemy Alien Control Program''|accessdate=December 6, 2012}}</ref> Information from the CDI was used to locate and incarcerate foreign nationals from Japan, [[Germany]] and [[Italy]] (although Germany and Italy did not declare war on the U.S. until December 11).

Presidential Proclamation 2537 was issued on January 14, 1942, requiring aliens to report any change of address, employment or name to the FBI. Enemy aliens were not allowed to enter restricted areas. Violators of these regulations were subject to "arrest, detention and internment for the duration of the war."<ref name="HistoryInternment">[http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roosevelt-ushers-in-japanese-american-internment This Day in History: Jan 14, 1942: Roosevelt ushers in Japanese-American internment], [[History.com]]</ref>

===Executive Order 9066 and related actions===
Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, allowed authorized military commanders to designate "military areas" at their discretion, "from which any or all persons may be excluded." These "exclusion zones," unlike the "alien enemy" roundups, were applicable to anyone that an authorized military commander might choose, whether citizen or non-citizen. Eventually such zones would include parts of both the East and West Coasts, totaling about 1/3 of the country by area. Unlike the subsequent deportation and incarceration programs that would come to be applied to large numbers of Japanese Americans, detentions and restrictions directly under this Individual Exclusion Program were placed primarily on individuals of [[German-American internment|German]] or [[Italian-American internment|Italian]] ancestry, including American citizens.<ref name=archives_aliens>[http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration/enemy-aliens-overview.html ''WWII Enemy Alien Control Overview''] from archives.gov Retrieved January 8, 2007.</ref>
*March 2, 1942: Lieutenant General [[John L. DeWitt]] issued Public Proclamation No. 1, declaring that "such person or classes of persons as the situation may require" would, at some later point, be subject to exclusion orders from "Military Area No. 1" (essentially, the entire Pacific coast to about {{convert|100|mi|km|1}} inland), and requiring anyone who had "enemy" ancestry to file a Change of Residence Notice if they planned to move.<ref name=korematsu_roberts/> A second exclusion zone was designated several months later, which included the areas chosen by most of the Japanese Americans who had managed to leave the first zone.
*March 11, 1942: Executive Order 9095 created the Office of the Alien Property Custodian, and gave it discretionary, plenary authority over all alien property interests. Many assets were frozen, creating immediate financial difficulty for the affected aliens, preventing most from moving out of the exclusion zones.<ref name=korematsu_roberts/>
*March 24, 1942: Public Proclamation No. 3 declares an 8:00&nbsp;pm to 6:00&nbsp;am curfew for "all enemy aliens and all persons of Japanese ancestry" within the military areas.<ref name=hirabayashi>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=320&page=81 ''Hirabayashi v. United States''], reproduced at findlaw.com. Retrieved September 15, 2006.</ref>
[[File:Bainbridge Island (Wash.) evacuation -- Group of young evacuees wave from special train as it leaves Seattle with Island evacuees, March 30, 1942.jpg|thumb|A Group of young evacuees wave from the window of a special train as it leaves [[Seattle]] with [[Bainbridge Island]] evacuees, March 30, 1942]]
*March 24, 1942: General DeWitt began to issue Civilian Exclusion Orders for specific areas within "Military Area No. 1."<ref name=hirabayashi/> Japanese Americans on [[Bainbridge Island]], Washington were the first in the country to be subject to such an order, due to the island's proximity to naval bases; they were given until March 30 to prepare for removal from the island, an event commemorated by the [[Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial]].<ref name="SeattlePI20099330">{{Cite news|url=http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Bainbridge-Island-breaks-ground-for-1302905.php|last=Ho|first=Vanessa|date=March 29, 2009|title=Bainbridge Island breaks ground for Japanese-American internment memorial|periodical=Seattle Post-Intelligencer|accessdate=September 1, 2011|postscript=<!-- Bot inserted parameter. Either remove it; or change its value to "." for the cite to end in a ".", as necessary. -->{{inconsistent citations}}}}</ref><ref name="NYTimes20110805">{{Cite news|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06internment.html?pagewanted=all|last=Seelye|first=Katharine Q.|date=August 5, 2011|title=A Wall to Remember an Era's First Exiles|periodical=The New York Times|accessdate=September 1, 2011|postscript=<!-- Bot inserted parameter. Either remove it; or change its value to "." for the cite to end in a ".", as necessary. -->{{inconsistent citations}}}}</ref>
*March 27, 1942: General DeWitt's Proclamation No. 4 prohibited all those of Japanese ancestry from leaving "Military Area No. 1" for "any purpose until and to the extent that a future proclamation or order of this headquarters shall so permit or direct."<ref name=korematsu_roberts/>
*May 3, 1942: General DeWitt issued Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34, ordering all people of Japanese ancestry, whether citizens or non-citizens, who were still living in "Military Area No. 1" to report to assembly centers, where they would live until being moved to permanent "Relocation Centers."<ref name=korematsu_roberts/>

These edicts included persons of part-Japanese ancestry as well. Anyone with at least one-sixteenth (equivalent to having one great-great grandparent) Japanese ancestry was eligible.<ref name='JPRI WP110'>{{cite web| first=Ellen Clare| last=Kennedy |url=http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp110.html |title=The Japanese-American Renunciants: Due Process and the Danger of Making Laws During Times of Fear|publisher=[[Japan Policy Research Institute]]|date=October 2006|accessdate=March 3, 2011}}</ref> Korean-Americans and Taiwanese,<ref>{{Cite book|title = Comparative Studies in Society and History. 1st ed. Vol. 2.|last = Kublin|first = Hyman|publisher = Cambridge University Press|isbn = |location = Cambridge|pages = 67–84}}</ref> classified as ethnically Japanese because both Korea and Taiwan were Japanese colonies, were also included.

===Non-military advocates for exclusion, removal, and detention===
The deportation and incarceration were popular among many white farmers who resented the Japanese American farmers. "White American farmers admitted that their self-interest required removal of the Japanese."<ref name="Taslitz"/> These individuals saw internment as a convenient means of uprooting their Japanese-American competitors. Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the ''[[Saturday Evening Post]]'' in 1942:

{{quotation|
"We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this valley to work, and they stayed to take over... If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we'd never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either."<ref>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=323&invol=214 ''Korematsu v. United States''] dissent by Justice [[Frank Murphy]], footnote 12, reproduced at findlaw.com. Retrieved September&nbsp;11,&nbsp;2006.</ref>
}}

The Roberts Commission Report, prepared at President Franklin D. Roosevelt's request, has been cited as an example of the fear and prejudice informing the thinking behind the internment program.<ref name="Taslitz"/> The Report sought to link Japanese Americans with espionage activity, and to associate them with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.<ref name="Taslitz"/> Columnist [[Henry McLemore]], who wrote for the [[William Randolph Hearst|Hearst newspapers]], reflected the growing public sentiment that was fueled by this report:

{{quotation|
"I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don't mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands... Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them."<ref>Neiwert, David. ''The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right''. 2009, page 195</ref>
}}

Other California newspapers also embraced this view. According to a ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' editorial,
{{quotation|
"A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched.... So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere... notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American.... Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion... that such treatment... should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race."<ref>Niiya, Brian. ''Japanese American History''. 1993, page 54</ref>
}}
State politicians joined the bandwagon that was embraced by [[Leland Ford]] of Los Angeles, who demanded that "all Japanese, whether citizens or not, be placed in [inland] concentration camps."<ref name="Taslitz"/>

Incarceration of Japanese Americans, who provided critical agricultural labor on the West Coast, created a labor shortage, which was exacerbated by the induction of many American laborers into the Armed Forces. This vacuum precipitated a mass immigration of Mexican workers into the United States to fill these jobs,<ref>Berberoglu, Berch. ''Labor and Capital in the Age of Globalization''. 2002, page 90</ref> under the banner of what became known as the [[Bracero Program]]. Many Japanese internees were temporarily released from their camps – for instance, to harvest Western beet crops – to address this wartime labor shortage.<ref>Hanel, Rachael. ''The Japanese American Internment''. 2008, page 20</ref>

===Non-military advocates against exclusion, removal, and detention===
Like many white American farmers, the white businessmen of Hawaii had their own motives for determining how to deal with the Japanese Americans, but they opposed internment. Instead, these individuals gained passage of legislation to retain in freedom the nearly 150,000 Japanese Americans who would have been otherwise sent to internment camps within Hawaii.<ref>Takaki, Ronald T. “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America”. Boston: Little, Brown &, 1993. Print, page 378.</ref> As a result, only 1,200 <ref name="Ogawa, Dennis M 1991, page 135"/> to 1,800 Japanese Americans in Hawaii were interned.

The powerful businessmen of Hawaii concluded that imprisonment of such a large proportion of the islands' population would adversely affect the economic prosperity of the island state.<ref name="Takaki, Ronald T. 1993. page 379">Takaki, Ronald T. “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America”. Boston: Little, Brown &, 1993. Print, page 379.</ref> The Japanese represented “over 90 percent of the carpenters, nearly all of the transportation workers, and a significant portion of the agricultural laborers” on the island.<ref name="Takaki, Ronald T. 1993. page 379"/>
General [[Delos Carleton Emmons]], the military governor of Hawaii, also argued that Japanese labor was “‘absolutely essential’ for rebuilding the defenses destroyed at [[Pearl Harbor]]”.<ref name="Takaki, Ronald T. 1993. page 379"/> Recognizing the Japanese-American community’s contribution to the affluence of the Hawaiian economy, General Emmons fought against the internment of the Japanese Americans and had the support of most of the businessmen of Hawaii.<ref name="Takaki, Ronald T. 1993. page 379"/>

Coming to different conclusions about how to deal with the Japanese-American community, both the white farmers of the United States and the white businessmen of Hawaii placed priority on protecting their own economic interests.

==Statement of military necessity as justification for internment==
[[File:A Challenge to Democracy (1944).ogv|thumb|320px|[[A Challenge to Democracy]] was a twenty-minute film produced in 1944 by the [[War Relocation Authority]] ]]

===Niihau Incident===
{{Main|Niihau Incident}}
The Niihau Incident occurred in December 1941, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Three Japanese Americans on the Hawaiian island of [[Niihau]] assisted a Japanese pilot, [[Shigenori Nishikaichi]], who crashed there. Despite the incident, the Territorial Governor of Hawaii rejected calls for the mass internment of the Japanese Americans living there. Shigenori Nishikaichi is buried  in his hometown, [[Hashihama]], Japan. On his grave stone is written, 'His meritorious deed will live forever.' <ref>{{Cite web|url = http://www.historynet.com/the-niihau-incident.htm|title = HistoryNet|date = November 12, 2000|accessdate = February 17, 2015|website = The Niihau Incident|publisher = HistoryNet|last = Hallstead|first = William}}</ref>

===Cryptography===
{{Main|Magic (cryptography)}}
In ''Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents From the West Coast During World War II'', [[David Lowman]], a former [[National Security Agency]] (NSA) operative, argues that [[Magic (cryptography)|Magic intercepts]] ("Magic" was the code-name for American code-breaking efforts) posed "the frightening specter of massive espionage nets," thus justifying internment.<ref>Maki, Mitchell Takeshi and Kitano, Harry H. L. and Berthold, Sarah Megan. ''Achieving the Impossible Dream''. 1999, page 143</ref> Lowman contended that incarceration served to ensure the secrecy of U.S. code-breaking efforts, because effective prosecution of Japanese Americans might necessitate disclosure of secret information. If U.S. code-breaking technology was revealed in the context of trials of individual spies, the Japanese Imperial Navy would change its codes, thus undermining US strategic wartime advantage.

Some scholars have criticized or dismissed Lowman's reasoning that "disloyalty" among some individual Japanese Americans could legitimize "incarcerating 120,000 people, including infants, the elderly, and the mentally ill".<ref>Leslie T. Hatamiya. ''Righting a Wrong''. 1994, page 106</ref><ref>Hayashi, Brian Masaru. ''Democratizing the enemy: the Japanese American internment''. 2004, page 6</ref><ref>{{cite book | author=Irons, Peter. | title=Justice At War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases | publisher=University of Washington Press | year=1993 | pages=374–5}}</ref> Lowman's reading of the contents of the ''Magic'' cables has also been challenged, as some scholars contend that the cables demonstrate that Japanese Americans were not heeding the overtures of Imperial Japan to spy against the United States.<ref>Brian Niiya. ''Japanese American history''. 1993, page 222</ref> According to one critic, Lowman's book has long since been "refuted and discredited".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.seattlepi.com/local/185162_vcenter06.html |title=Book defends WWII internment of Japanese Americans, racial profiling |publisher=''Seattle Post Intelligencer'' |accessdate=January 24, 2010 |deadurl=yes}} {{Dead link|date=January 2012|bot=RjwilmsiBot}}</ref>

The controversial conclusions drawn by Lowman were defended by conservative commentator [[Michelle Malkin]] in her book ''[[In Defense of Internment]]; The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror'' (2004).<ref>Malkin, Michelle. ''In Defense of Internment''. 2004, pages 128; 135; 275.</ref> Malkin's defense of Japanese internment was due in part to reaction to what she describes as the "constant alarmism from Bush-bashers who argue that every counter-terror measure in America is tantamount to the internment".<ref>{{cite web|last=Malkin |first=Michelle |url=http://michellemalkin.com/2004/08/03/in-defense-of-internment-2/ |title=In Defense Of Internment |publisher=Michelle Malkin |date=August 3, 2004 |accessdate=December 5, 2011}}</ref> She criticized academia's treatment of the subject, and suggested that academics critical of Japanese internment had ulterior motives. Her book was widely criticized, particularly with regard to her reading of the "Magic" cables.<ref>{{cite web|author=Eric Muller |url=http://hnn.us/articles/7094.html |title=So Let Me Get This Straight: Michelle Malkin Claims to Have Rewritten the History of Japanese Internment in Just 16 Months? |publisher=''History Network'' |accessdate=December 5, 2011}}</ref><ref>[http://hnn.us/articles/7092.html Why the Media Should Stop Paying Attention to the New Book that Defends Japanese Internment<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Khawaja |first=Irfan |url=http://hnn.us/articles/9512.html |title=Japanese Internment: Why Daniel Pipes Is Wrong |publisher=Hnn.us |accessdate=January 24, 2010}}</ref> [[Daniel Pipes]], also drawing on Lowman, has defended Malkin, and said that Japanese American internment was "a good idea" which offers "lessons for today".<ref>{{cite web|author=Daniel Pipes |url=http://hnn.us/articles/9289.html |title=Japanese Internment: Why It Was a Good Idea-And the Lessons It Offers Today |publisher=Hnn.us |accessdate=December 5, 2011}}</ref>

===United States District Court opinions===
[[Image:Posted Japanese American Exclusion Order.jpg|thumb|Official notice of exclusion and removal]]
A letter by [[John L. DeWitt|General DeWitt]] and [[Karl Bendetsen|Colonel Bendetsen]] expressing racist bias against Japanese Americans was circulated and then hastily redacted in 1943–1944. DeWitt's final report stated that, because of their race, it was impossible to determine the loyalty of Japanese Americans, thus necessitating internment.<ref name='Final Report'>{{cite web|url=http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/dewitt0.html|author=Lt. Gen. J.L. DeWitt |title=Final Report; Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast 1942 |publisher=U.S. Army |date=June 5, 1943 |accessdate=March 3, 2011}}</ref> The original version was so offensive – even in the atmosphere of the wartime 1940s – that Bendetsen ordered all copies to be destroyed.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Brian|first1=Niiya|title=Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942|date=February 1, 2014|publisher=Densho Encyclopedia|url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Final%20Report,%20Japanese%20Evacuation%20from%20the%20West%20Coast,%201942%20(book)/.}}</ref>

In 1980, a copy of the original ''Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast – 1942'' was found in the [[United States National Archives|National Archives]], along with notes showing the numerous differences between the original and redacted versions.<ref>[http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Final_Report,_Japanese_Evacuation_from_the_West_Coast,_1942_(book)/ Niiya, Brian, Densho Encyclopedia, Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (book)]</ref> This earlier, racist and inflammatory version, as well as the FBI and [[Office of Naval Intelligence]] (ONI) reports, led to the ''[[coram nobis]]'' retrials which overturned the convictions of [[Fred Korematsu]], [[Gordon Hirabayashi]] and [[Minoru Yasui]] on all charges related to their refusal to submit to exclusion and internment.<ref name='Bad landmark'>{{cite news | url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926338,00.html| title = Bad landmark; righting a racial wrong| accessdate =March 3, 2011| date = November 21, 1983|work= Time Magazine }}</ref> The courts found that the government had intentionally withheld these reports and other critical evidence, at trials all the way up to the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]], which proved that there was no military necessity for the exclusion and internment of Japanese Americans. In the words of [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] officials writing during the war, the justifications were based on "willful historical inaccuracies and intentional falsehoods."

===The Ringle Report===
In May 2011, U.S. Solicitor General [[Neal Katyal]], after a year of investigation, found [[Charles Fahy]] had intentionally withheld ''The Ringle Report'' drafted by the Office of Naval Intelligence, in order to justify the Roosevelt administration's actions in the cases of ''[[Hirabayashi v. United States]]'' and ''[[Korematsu v. United States]]''. The report would have undermined the administration's position of the military necessity for such action, as it concluded that most Japanese Americans were not a national security threat, and that allegations of communication espionage had been found to be without basis by the FBI and [[Federal Communications Commission]].<ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/27/opinion/la-ed-internment-20110527 "The truth about WWII internment"], ''Los Angeles Times,'' May 27, 2011. Accessed June 7, 2011</ref>

==Facilities==
[[File:Photograph of Members of the Mochida Family Awaiting Evacuation - NARA - 537505.jpg|thumb|left|"Members of the Mochida family awaiting evacuation bus. Identification tags are used to aid in keeping the family unit intact during all phases of evacuation. Mochida operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township. He raised snapdragons and sweet peas."]]

While this event is most commonly called the ''internment'' of Japanese Americans, the government operated several different types of camps holding Japanese Americans. The best known facilities were the military-run Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) ''Assembly Centers'' and the civilian-run [[War Relocation Authority]] (WRA) ''Relocation Centers,'' which are generally (but unofficially) referred to as "internment camps." Scholars have urged dropping such euphemisms and refer to them as concentration camps and the people as incarcerated.<ref name =  "Aiko-Words">{{Citation | last = Herzig Yoshinaga | first = AIko | url = http://manzanarcommittee.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/wordscanlieorclarify-ahy.pdf | title = Words Can Lie Or Clarify: Terminology Of The World War II Incarceration Of Japanese Americans | publisher = Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga | format = PDF | year = 2009 | accessdate = March 28, 2015}}</ref> The [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] (DOJ) operated camps officially called ''Internment Camps'', which were used to detain those suspected of crimes or of "enemy sympathies." The government also operated camps for a limited number of [[German American internment|German Americans]] and [[Italian American internment|Italian Americans]], who sometimes were assigned to share facilities with the Japanese Americans. The WCCA and WRA facilities were the largest and the most public. The WCCA Assembly Centers were temporary facilities that were first set up in horse racing tracks, fairgrounds and other large public meeting places to assemble and organize internees before they were transported to WRA Relocation Centers by truck, bus or train. The WRA Relocation Centers were semi-permanent camps that housed persons removed from the exclusion zone after March 1942, or until they were able to relocate elsewhere in the United States outside the exclusion zone.

===DOJ and Army internment camps===
Eight U.S. Department of Justice Camps (in Texas, [[Idaho]], [[North Dakota]], [[New Mexico]], and [[Montana]]) held Japanese Americans, primarily non-citizens and their families.<ref name='Densho-SOS'>Densho, [http://www.densho.org/sitesofshame/facilities.xml "Sites of Shame."]</ref> The camps were run by the [[Immigration and Naturalization Service]], under the umbrella of the DOJ, and guarded by [[United States Border Patrol|Border Patrol]] agents rather than military police.  The population of these camps included approximately 3,800 of the 5,500 [[Buddhist]] and Christian ministers, Japanese-language school instructors, newspaper workers, fishermen, and community leaders who had been accused of fifth column activity and arrested by the FBI after Pearl Harbor. (The remaining 1,700 were released to WRA relocation centers.)<ref name=Densho-about/> Immigrants and nationals of [[German-American internment|German]] and [[Italian-American internment|Italian]] ancestry were also held in these facilities, often in the same camps as Japanese Americans. Approximately 7,000 [[German-American internment|German Americans]] and 3,000 [[Italian-American internment|Italian Americans]] from Hawai'i and the U.S. mainland were interned in DOJ camps, along with 500 German seamen already in custody after being rescued from the ''SS Columbus'' in 1938.<ref name='GID-Rosenfeld'>Alan Rosenfeld. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/German%20and%20Italian%20detainees/ "German and Italian detainees"], ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed Mar 5, 2014).</ref> In addition 2,264 ethnic Japanese,<ref name=niiya>Niiya, Brian. ''Japanese American History: An A to Z History from 1868 to the Present'' (1993) p191.</ref> 4,058 ethnic Germans, and 288 ethnic Italians<ref name='GID-Rosenfeld'/> were deported from 19 Latin American countries for a later-abandoned hostage exchange program with Axis countries or confinement in DOJ camps.<ref>Connel, Thomas. ''America's Japanese Hostages''. 2002, page 145-8</ref>
[[File:Hayward, California. Friends say good-bye as family of Japanese ancestry await evacuation bus. Bag . . . - NARA - 537514.jpg|thumb|200px|Friends say good-bye as family of Japanese ancestry await evacuation bus. Hayward, California, 8 May 1942]]
Several U.S. Army internment camps held Japanese, [[Italian-American internment|Italian]] and [[German-American internment|German American]] men considered "potentially dangerous." Camp Lordsburg, in New Mexico, was the only site built specifically to confine Japanese Americans. In May 1943, the Army was given responsibility for the detention of [[prisoners of war]] and all civilian internees were transferred to DOJ camps.<ref name='Densho-SOS'/>

===WCCA Civilian Assembly Centers===
<!--Some of the following paragraph was copied from http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce16.htm and is a place holder until better copy can be drafted.-->Executive Order 9066 authorized the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast; however, it was signed before there were any facilities completed to house the displaced Japanese Americans. After the voluntary evacuation program failed to result in many families leaving the exclusion zone, the military took charge of the now-mandatory evacuation. On April 9, 1942, the '''Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA)'''<ref name="wcca">Brian Niiya. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Wartime_Civil_Control_Administration "Wartime Civil Control Administration,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 14 Mar 2014).</ref> was established by the [[Western Defense Command]] to coordinate the forced removal of Japanese Americans to inland concentration camps.

The relocation centers faced opposition from inland communities near the proposed sites who disliked the idea of their new "Jap" neighbors. In addition, government forces were struggling to build what would essentially be self-sufficient towns in very isolated, undeveloped and harsh regions of the country; they were not prepared to house the influx of over 110,000 internees. Since Japanese Americans living in the restricted zone were considered too dangerous to conduct their daily business, the military decided it had to house them in temporary centers until the relocation centers were completed.<ref>''Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites'', Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord, [http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce16.htm Chapter 16], [http://www.nps.gov/ NPS]. Retrieved August 31, 2006.</ref>

Under the direction of Colonel Karl Bendetsen, existing facilities had been designated for conversion to WCCA use in March 1942, and the Army Corps of Engineers finished construction on these sites on April 21, 1942.<ref name='Linke-AC'>Konrad Linke. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Assembly%20centers/ "Assembly centers,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 14 Mar 2014).</ref> All but four of the 15 confinement sites (12 in California, and one each in Washington, Oregon and Arizona) had previously been racetracks or fairgrounds. The stables and livestock areas were cleaned out and hastily converted to living quarters for families of up to six, while wood and tarpaper barracks were constructed for additional housing, as well as communal latrines, laundry facilities and mess halls.<ref name="wcca"/><ref name='Linke-AC'/> A total of 92,193<ref name='Linke-AC'/> Japanese Americans were transferred to these temporary detention centers from March to August 1942. (18,026<ref name='Linke-AC'/> more had been taken directly to two "reception centers" that were developed as the Manzanar and [[Poston War Relocation Center|Poston]] WRA camps.) The WCCA was dissolved on March 15, 1943, when it became the War Relocation Authority and turned its attentions to the more permanent relocation centers.<ref name="wcca"/>

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; font-size:85%; margin-left:10px;"
|+'''WRA Relocation Centers'''<ref>''Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites,'' Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord, [http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce3g.htm Chapter 3], [http://www.nps.gov/ NPS]. Retrieved August 31, 2006.</ref>
!Name
!State
!Opened
!Max. Pop'n
|- Ft Missoula relocation center|Missoula|Montana|?|?
|-
|[[Manzanar]]
|California
|March 1942
|10,046
|-
|[[Tule Lake War Relocation Center|Tule Lake]]
|California
|May 1942
|18,789
|-
|[[Poston War Relocation Center|Poston]]
|Arizona
|May 1942
|17,814
|-
|[[Gila River War Relocation Center|Gila River]]
|Arizona
|July 1942
|13,348
|-
|[[Granada War Relocation Center|Granada]]
|Colorado
|August 1942
|7,318
|-
|[[Heart Mountain War Relocation Center|Heart Mountain]]
| Wyoming
|August 1942
|10,767
|-
|[[Minidoka War Relocation Center|Minidoka]]
|Idaho
|August 1942
|9,397
|-
|[[Topaz War Relocation Center|Topaz]]
| Utah
|September 1942
|8,130
|-
|[[Rohwer War Relocation Center|Rohwer]]
|Arkansas
|September 1942
|8,475
|-
|[[Jerome War Relocation Center|Jerome]]
|Arkansas
|October 1942
|8,497
|}

===WRA Relocation Centers===
The [[War Relocation Authority]] (WRA) was the U.S. civilian agency responsible for the relocation and detention. The WRA was created by President Roosevelt on March 18, 1942 with [[Executive Order 9102]] and officially ceased to exist June 30, 1946. [[Milton S. Eisenhower]], then an official of the Department of Agriculture, was chosen to head the WRA. [[Dillon S. Myer]] replaced Eisenhower three months later on June 17, 1942. Myer served as Director of the WRA until the centers were closed.<ref>''Japanese Americans From Relocation to Redress.'' Daniels, Roger, Sandra Taylor, Harry Kitano. Seattle Washington. University of Washington Press, 1991.</ref> Within nine months, the WRA had opened ten facilities in seven states, and transferred over 100,000 people from the WCCA facilities.

The WRA camp at [[Tule Lake War Relocation Center|Tule Lake]], though initially like the other camps, eventually was used as a detention center for people believed to pose a security risk. Tule Lake also served as a "segregation center" for individuals and families who were deemed "disloyal," and for those who were to be deported to Japan.

===List of camps===
There were three types of camps. ''Civilian Assembly Centers'' were temporary camps, frequently located at horse tracks, where Japanese Americans were sent as they were removed from their communities. Eventually, most were sent to ''Relocation Centers,'' also known as ''internment camps.'' ''Detention camps'' housed Nikkei considered to be disruptive or of special interest to the government.

====Civilian Assembly Centers====
*[[Arcadia, California]] ([[Santa Anita Racetrack]], stables)
*[[Fresno, California]] ([[Big Fresno Fairgrounds]], racetrack, stables)
*[[Marysville, California|Marysville]] / [[Arboga, California]] (migrant workers' camp)
*[[Mayer, Arizona]] ([[Civilian Conservation Corps]] camp)
*[[Merced, California]] (county fairgrounds)[[File:Eleanor Roosevelt at Gila River, Arizona at Japanese,American Internment Center - NARA - 197094.jpg|thumb|[[Eleanor Roosevelt]] at the Gila River Relocation Center, April 23, 1943]]
*[[Owens Valley, California]]
*[[Parker Dam, Arizona]]
*[[Pinedale, California]] ([[Pinedale, California|Pinedale Assembly Center]], warehouses)
*[[Pomona, California]] ([[Fairplex|Los Angeles County Fairgrounds]], racetrack, stables)
*[[Portland, Oregon]] ([[Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center|Pacific International Livestock Exposition]], including 3,800 housed in the main pavilion building)
*[[Puyallup, Washington]] (fairgrounds racetrack stables, Informally known as "[[Camp Harmony]]")
*[[Sacramento, California]] [[Camp Kohler]] (Site of Present-Day Walerga Park) (migrant workers' camp)
*[[Salinas, California]] ([[California Rodeo Salinas|fairgrounds]], racetrack, stables)
*[[San Bruno, California]] ([[Tanforan]] racetrack, stables)
*[[Stockton, California]] (San Joaquin County Fairgrounds, racetrack, stables)
*[[Tulare, California]] (fairgrounds, racetrack, stables)
*[[Turlock, California]] (Stanislaus County Fairgrounds)
*[[Woodland, California]]
[[File:Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Residents of Japanese ancestry, at the H . . . - NARA - 539235.jpg|thumb|Heart Mountain Relocation Center, January 10, 1943]]

====Relocation Centers====
*[[Gila River War Relocation Center]], Arizona
*[[Granada War Relocation Center]], Colorado (AKA "Amache")
*[[Heart Mountain War Relocation Center]], Wyoming
*[[Jerome War Relocation Center]], Arkansas
*[[Manzanar War Relocation Center]], California
*[[Minidoka War Relocation Center]], Idaho
*[[Poston War Relocation Center]], Arizona
*[[Rohwer War Relocation Center]], Arkansas
*[[Topaz War Relocation Center]], Utah
*[[Tule Lake War Relocation Center]], California

====Justice Department detention camps====
These camps often held [[German-American internment|German-American]] and [[Italian-American internment|Italian-American]] detainees in addition to Japanese Americans:<ref name="fulllist">{{cite web | title=Japanese American Internment Camps | url=http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/camp.html | accessdate=October 2, 2007}}</ref>
*[[Crystal City Internment Camp|Crystal City, Texas]]<ref name=texasarchive>{{cite web|title=Alien Enemy Detention Facility, Crystal City, Texas|url=http://www.texasarchive.org/library/index.php?title=Alien_Enemy_Detention_Facility%2C_Crystal_City%2C_Texas&gsearch=alien%20enemy|work=[[The Texas Archive of the Moving Image]]|accessdate=August 5, 2011}}</ref>
*[[Fort Lincoln Internment Camp]]
*[[Fort Missoula Internment Camp|Fort Missoula]], [[Montana]]
*[[Fort Stanton, New Mexico]][[File:Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, California. Harvesting spinach. - NARA - 538316.jpg|thumb|Harvesting spinach. Tule Lake Relocation Center, September 8, 1942]]
*[[Kenedy, Texas]]
*[[Kooskia Internment Camp|Kooskia, Idaho]]
*[[Santa Fe, New Mexico]]
*[[Seagoville, Texas]]

====Citizen Isolation Centers====
The Citizen Isolation Centers were for those considered to be problem inmates.<ref name="fulllist"/>
*[[Leupp, Arizona]]
*[[Moab, Utah]] (AKA Dalton Wells)
*[[Fort Stanton, New Mexico]] (AKA Old Raton Ranch)

====Federal Bureau of Prisons====
Detainees convicted of crimes, usually draft resistance, were sent to these sites, mostly federal prisons:<ref name="fulllist"/>
*[[Catalina Federal Honor Camp|Catalina, Arizona]]
*[[Fort Leavenworth, Kansas]]
*[[McNeil Island, Washington]]

====US Army facilities====
These camps often held [[German-American internment|German]] and [[Italian-American internment|Italian]] detainees in addition to Japanese Americans:<ref name="fulllist"/>
*[[Angel Island (California)|Fort McDowell/Angel Island, California]]
*[[Camp Blanding, Florida]]
*[[Camp Forrest]], Tennessee
*[[Camp Livingston]], Louisiana
*[[Camp Lordsburg, New Mexico]]
*[[Camp McCoy, Wisconsin]]
*[[Florence, Arizona]]
*[[Fort Bliss]], New Mexico and Texas
*[[Fort Howard (Maryland)|Fort Howard, Maryland]]
*[[Fort Lewis]], Washington
*[[Fort Meade, Maryland]]
*[[Fort Richardson (Alaska)|Fort Richardson, Alaska]]
*[[Fort Sam Houston]], Texas
*[[Fort Sill, Oklahoma]]
*[[Griffith Park]], California
*[[Honouliuli Internment Camp]], Hawaiʻi
*[[Sand Island, Hawaii|Sand Island, Hawaiʻi]]
*[[Stringtown, Oklahoma]]

====Immigration and Naturalization Service facilities====
These immigration detention stations held the roughly 5,500 men arrested immediately after Pearl Harbor, in addition to several thousand German and Italian detainees, and served as processing centers from which the men were transferred to DOJ or Army camps:<ref>Burton, J.; Farrell, M.; Lord, F.; Lord, R. ''Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites'', "[http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce17a.htm Temporary Detention Stations]" (National Park Service, 2000). Retrieved August 13, 2014.</ref>
*[[East Boston Immigration Station]]
*[[Ellis Island]]
*[[Cincinnati, Ohio]]
*[[San Pedro, Los Angeles]]
*[[Seattle]], Washington
*[[Pacifica, California|Sharp Park]], California
*[[Sunland-Tujunga, Los Angeles|Tuna Canyon]], Los Angeles

==Exclusion, removal, and detention==
[[File:Byron, California. Field laborers of Japanese ancestry in front of Wartime Civil Control Administra . . . - NARA - 537774.jpg|thumb|left|Field laborers of Japanese ancestry stand in front of a Wartime Civil Control Administration site, where they are seeking instruction in regards to their "evacuation".]]

Somewhere between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program, of whom about two-thirds were U.S. citizens.<ref name=howmany/> The remaining one-third were non-citizens subject to internment under the [[Alien Enemies Act]]; many of these "resident aliens" had been inhabitants of the United States for decades, but had been deprived by law of being able to become naturalized citizens. Also part of the West Coast removal were [[Manzanar Children's Village|101 children]] of Japanese descent taken from orphanages and foster homes within the exclusion zone.<ref>Tawa, Renee. [http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-11/news/mn-37002_1_manzanar-orphans ''Childhood Lost: The Orphans of Manzanar"], ''Los Angeles Times,'' 11 Mar 1997 (accessed 23 May 2014).</ref>

Internees of Japanese descent were first sent to one of 17 temporary "Civilian Assembly Centers," where most awaited transfer to more permanent relocation centers being constructed by the newly formed [[War Relocation Authority]] (WRA). Some of those who reported to the civilian assembly centers were not sent to relocation centers, but were released under the condition that they remain outside the prohibited zone until the military orders were modified or lifted. Almost 120,000<ref name=howmany/> Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens were eventually removed from their homes in California, the western halves of [[Oregon]] and [[Washington (state)|Washington]] and southern [[Arizona]] as part of the single largest forced relocation in [[History of the United States|U.S. history]].

Most of these camps/residences, gardens, and stock areas were placed on Native American reservations, for which the Native Americans were formally compensated. The Native American councils disputed the amounts negotiated in absentia by US government authorities. They later sued to gain relief and additional compensation for some items of dispute.<ref>{{cite journal
 |title=Docket No. 236-A, 236-B, Gila River Indian Community v. The United States of America
 |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/icc/v25/iccv25p250.pdf
 |date=April 28, 1971
 |work=Indian Claims Commission Decisions
 |volume=25
 |page=250}}</ref>

Under the National Student Council Relocation Program (supported primarily by the [[American Friends Service Committee]]), students of college age were permitted to leave the camps to attend institutions willing to accept students of Japanese ancestry. Although the program initially granted leave permits to a very small number of students, this eventually included 2,263 students by December 31, 1943.<ref>Source: ''War Relocation Authority annual reports''</ref>

[[Image:Luggage - Japanese American internment.jpg|thumb|right|The baggage of Japanese Americans from the west coast, at a makeshift reception center located at a racetrack.]]
[[File:A young evacuee of Japanese ancestry waits with the family baggage before leaving by bus for an assembly center... - NARA - 539959.jpg|thumb|An evacuee with family belongings en route to an "assembly center", Spring 1942]]

===Curfew and exclusion===
<!-- This section should address the initial stages, including the curfew imposed after the military areas were defined; the exclusion zone definitions, and the steps toward removal. The voluntary resettlement policy and its response should be discussed here. -->
On March 2, 1942, General John DeWitt, commanding general of the Western Defense Command, publicly announced the creation of two military restricted zones.<ref name='JANM chrono'>Japanese American National Museum, [http://www.janm.org/projects/clasc/chronology.htm "Chronology of WWII Incarceration"] (accessed 12 Mar 2014).</ref> Military Area No. 1 consisted of the southern half of Arizona and the western half of California, Oregon and Washington, as well as all of California south of Los Angeles. Military Area No. 2 covered the rest of those states. DeWitt's proclamation informed Japanese Americans they would be required to leave Military Area 1, but stated that they could remain in the second restricted zone.<ref>Brian Niiya. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Military%20Areas%201%20and%202/ "Military Areas 1 and 2,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' Retrieved 12 Mar 2014.</ref> Removal from Military Area No. 1 initially occurred through "voluntary evacuation."<ref name='Voluntary evacuation'/> Japanese Americans were free to go anywhere outside of the exclusion zone or inside Area 2, with arrangements and costs of relocation to be borne by the individuals. The policy was short-lived; DeWitt issued another proclamation on March 27 that prohibited Japanese Americans from leaving Area 1.<ref name='JANM chrono'/> A night-time curfew, also initiated on March 27, 1942, placed further restrictions on the movements and daily lives of Japanese Americans.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kashima|first1=T.|title=Judgment without trial: Japanese American imprisonment during World War II|date=2003|publisher=University of Washington Press}}</ref>

Eviction from the West Coast began on March 24, 1942 with Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1, which gave the 227 Japanese American residents of [[Bainbridge Island, Washington]] six days to prepare for their "evacuation" directly to Manzanar.<ref>Anne Blankenship. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Bainbridge_Island%2C_Washington/ "Bainbridge Island, Washington,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 31 Mar 2014).</ref> [[Colorado]] governor [[Ralph Lawrence Carr]] was the only elected official to publicly denounce the internment of American citizens (an act that cost his reelection, but gained him the gratitude of the Japanese American community, such that a statue of him was erected in the [[Denver]] Japantown's [[Sakura Square]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.coloradohistory.org/RIPsigns/show_markertext.asp?id=811 |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20061002001303/http://www.coloradohistory.org/RIPsigns/show_markertext.asp?id=811 |archivedate=October 2, 2006 |title=The Colorado History Organization |publisher=Web.archive.org |accessdate=January 24, 2010}}</ref>). A total of 108 exclusion orders issued by the Western Defense Command over the next five months completed the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast in August 1942.<ref>Brian Niiya. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Civilian%20exclusion%20orders/ "Civilian exclusion orders,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 31 Mar 2014).</ref>

===Conditions in the camps===
The quality of life in the camps was heavily influenced by which government entity was responsible for them. INS Camps were regulated by international treaty. The legal difference between interned and relocated had significant effects on those locked up. INS camps were required to provide food quality and housing at the minimum equal to that experienced by the lowest ranked person in the military. Food in INS camps was of better quality than that of WRA camps.{{citation needed|date=November 2014}}

According to a 1943 [[War Relocation Authority]] report, internees were housed in "tar paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." The spartan facilities met international laws, but left much to be desired. Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living.{{citation needed|date=November 2014}} Throughout many camps, twenty-five people were forced to live in space built to contain four, leaving no room for privacy. <ref>Sandler, Martin. Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans during World War II. New York: Walker of Bloomsbury, 2013.</ref> 
[[File:"Persons of Japanese ancestry arrive at the Santa Anita Assembly Center from San Pedro. Evacuees lived at this center at - NARA - 539960.jpg|thumb|Dust storm at [[Manzanar]] War Relocation Center.]]
[[Image:Ansel Adams, Baseball game at Manzanar, 1943.jpg|thumb|A baseball game at Manzanar. Picture by [[Ansel Adams]] c. 1943.]]

The [[Heart Mountain War Relocation Center]] in northwestern [[Wyoming]] was a barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for food rations.{{clarify|reason=For feeding people "wholesale", 45 cts/day was not bad then. There was zero inflation due to price controls. I did something like this in the 1950s in a military commissary. They ate well. Lacks context|date=November 2014}}<ref>{{Cite book
 |url=http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/documents/index.php?documentdate=1943-03-00&documentid=16&studycollectionid=JI&pagenumber=1
 |title=Work of the War Relocation Authority, An Anniversary Statement
 |first=Dillon S.
 |last=Myer
 |date=March 1943
 |publisher=The Harry S. Truman Library & Museum
}}</ref>

Armed guards were posted at the camps, which were all in remote, desolate areas far from population centers. Internees were typically allowed to stay with their families, and were treated decently unless they violated the rules. There are documented instances of guards shooting internees who reportedly attempted to walk outside the fences. One such shooting, that of James Wakasa at Topaz, led to a re-evaluation of the security measures in the camps. Some camp administrations eventually allowed relatively free movement outside the marked boundaries of the camps. Nearly a quarter of the internees left the camps to live and work elsewhere in the United States, outside the exclusion zone. Eventually, some were authorized to return to their hometowns in the exclusion zone under supervision of a sponsoring American family or agency whose loyalty had been assured.<ref>{{Cite book
 |title=Wartime Internment
 |first= Mikiso
 |last=Hane
 |date=September 1990
 |publisher=Organizer of American Historians}}</ref>

The phrase "[[shikata ga nai]]" (loosely translated as "it cannot be helped") was commonly used to summarize the interned families' resignation to their helplessness throughout these conditions. This was noticed by their children, as mentioned in the well-known memoir ''[[Farewell to Manzanar]]'' by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston.

====Medical care====
Before the war, 87 physicians and surgeons, 137 nurses, 105 dentists, 132 pharmacists, 35 optometrists, and 92 lab technicians provided healthcare to the Japanese American population, with most practicing in urban centers like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. As the eviction from the West Coast was carried out, the Wartime Civilian Control Administration worked with the [[United States Public Health Service]] and many of these professionals to establish infirmaries within the temporary assembly centers. An Issei doctor was appointed to manage each facility, and additional healthcare staff worked under his supervision, although the USPHS recommendation of one physician for every 1,000 inmates and one nurse to 200 inmates was not met. Overcrowded and unsanitary conditions forced assembly center infirmaries to prioritize inoculations over general care, obstetrics and surgeries; at Manzanar, for example, hospital staff performed over 40,000 immunizations against typhoid and smallpox.<ref name=Fiset>{{cite web|last=Fiset |first=Louis |url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Medical%20care%20in%20camp/ |title=Medical care in camp |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |accessdate=November 3, 2014}}</ref>{{clarify|reason=compared to how many general care/ob/surgery patients?|date=April 2015}} Food poisoning was common and also demanded significant attention. Those who were interned in Topaz, Minidoka, and Jerome experienced outbreaks of [[dysentery]].<ref>Sandler, Martin. Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans during World War II. New York: Walker of Bloomsbury, 2013.</ref>

Facilities in the more permanent "relocation centers" eventually surpassed the makeshift assembly center infirmaries, but in many cases these hospitals were incomplete when inmates began to arrive and were not fully functional for several months. Additionally, vital medical supplies such as medications and surgical and sterilization equipment were limited. The staff shortages suffered in the assembly centers continued in the WRA camps. The administration's decision to invert the management structure and demote Japanese American medical workers to positions below white employees, while capping their pay rate at a $20/month, further exacerbated this problem. (At Heart Mountain, for example, Japanese American doctors received $19/month compared to white nurses' $150/month.)<ref>Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. "[http://www.heartmountain.org/lifeincamp/html Life in Camp]." Retrieved November 17, 2014</ref><ref>Mackey, Mike. "[http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/haiku/mackey.htm A Brief History of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and the Japanese American Experience]." Retrieved November 17, 2014</ref> The war had caused a shortage of healthcare professionals across the country, and the camps often lost potential recruits to outside hospitals that offered better pay and living conditions. When the WRA began to allow some Japanese Americans to leave camp, many [[Nikkei people|Nikkei]] medical professionals resettled outside camp. Those who remained had little authority in administration of the hospitals. Combined with the inequitable payment of salaries between white and Japanese American employees, conflicts arose at several hospitals, and there were two Japanese American walk-outs at Heart Mountain in 1943.<ref name=Fiset/>

Despite a shortage of healthcare workers, limited access to equipment, and tension between white administrators and Japanese American staff, these hospitals provided much needed medical care in camp. The extreme climates of the remote incarceration sites were hard on infants and elderly inmates. The frequent dust storms of the high desert locations led to increased cases of asthma and [[coccidioidomycosis]], while the swampy, mosquito-infested Arkansas camps exposed residents to [[malaria]], all of which were treated in camp. Almost 6,000 live deliveries were performed in these hospitals, and all mothers received pre- and postnatal care. The WRA recorded 1,862 deaths across the ten camps, with cancer, heart disease, tuberculosis, and vascular disease accounting for the majority.<ref name=Fiset/>

===Education in the camps===
[[File:Flag of allegiance pledge at Raphael Weill Public School, Geary and Buchanan Streets.gif|thumb|Flag of allegiance pledge at Raphael Weill Public School, Geary and Buchanan Streets. 20 April 1942]]
Of the 110,000 Japanese Americans detained by the United States government during WWII, 30,000 were children.<ref>{{cite book|last1=James|first1=Thomas|title=Exile within: The Schooling of Japanese Americans, 1942-1945|date=1 Oct 2013|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674184725|accessdate=10 February 2015}}</ref> Most were school-age children, so educational facilities were set up in the camps. Allowing them to continue their education, however, did not erase the potential for traumatic experiences during their overall time in the camps.<ref>{{cite web|title=Children of the Camps|url=http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/documentary/index.html|website=PBS.org|accessdate=10 February 2015}}</ref> The government had not adequately planned for the camps, and no real budget or plan was set aside for the new camp educational facilities.<ref name="ReferenceB">Hui Wu, "'Writing and Teaching Behind Barbed Wire: An Exiled Composition Class in a Japanese Internment Camp"], ''College Composition and Communication'', Vol. 59, No. 2, December 2007{{subscription required|via JSTOR}}</ref> Camp schoolhouses were crowded with insufficient materials, books, notebooks, and desks for students. These ‘schoolhouses’ were essentially prison blocks that contained few windows. In the Southwest, when temperatures rose and the schoolhouse filled, the rooms would be sweltering and unbearable.<ref name="ReferenceB"/> Class sizes were immense. At the height of it attendance, the Rohwer Camp of Arkansas reached 2,339, with only 45 certified teachers.<ref>Wu (2007), "Writing and Teaching", pg. 241</ref> The teacher to student ratio in the camps was 48:1 in elementary schools and 35:1 for secondary schools, compared to the national average of 28:1.<ref>Wu (2007), "Writing and Teaching", pg. 240</ref>

The rhetorical curriculum of the schools was based mostly on the study of “the democratic ideal and to discover its many implications.”<ref>Wu (2007), "Writing and Teaching", pg. 243</ref> English compositions researched at the Jerome and Rohwer camps in Arkansas focused on these ‘American ideals’, and many of the compositions pertained to the camps. Responses were varied, as schoolchildren of the Topaz camp were patriotic and believed in the war effort, but could not ignore the fact of their incarceration.<ref>George W. Chilcoat (Adapter, Author), Michael O. Tunnell (Author), ''The Children of Topaz: The Story of a Japanese Internment Camp, Based on a Classroom Diary'', Holiday House, 1996 (Children's book)</ref> To build patriotism, the Japanese language was banned in the camps, forcing the children to learn English and then go home and teach their parents. <ref>Wu, Hui. "Writing and Teaching behind Barbed Wire: An Exiled Composition Class in a Japanese-American Internment." 59 College Composition & Communication (Dec, 2007): 327-262.</ref>  

===Sports in the camps===
[[File:Smithsonian photo of softball from Heart Mountain Relocation Center.jpg|thumb|Smithsonian photo of softball from Heart Mountain Relocation Center]]
Although life in the camps was very difficult, Japanese Americans formed many different sports teams, including baseball and football teams.<ref>{{Cite web|url = http://www.nps.gov/manz/historyculture/japanese-americans-at-manzanar.htm|title = Japanese Americans at Manzanar|accessdate = February 10, 2015|website = National Park Service|publisher = United States|last = |first = }}</ref> In January 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued what came to be known as the "Green Light Letter," to MLB Commissioner [[Kenesaw Mountain Landis]], which urged him to continue playing [[Major League Baseball]] games despite the ongoing war. In it Roosevelt said that "baseball provides a recreation," and this was true for Japanese American incarcerees as well. Over 100 baseball teams were formed in the Manzanar camp so that Japanese Americans could have some recreation, and some of the team names were carry-overs from teams formed before the incarceration.<ref>{{Cite web|url = http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/upshot/for-incarcerated-japanese-americans-baseball-was-wearing-the-american-flag.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1|title = For Incarcerated Japanese-Americans, Baseball Was ‘Wearing the American Flag’|date = June 20, 2014|accessdate = February 10, 2015|website = New York Times|publisher = NY Times|last = Michael|first = Beschloss}}</ref>

Both men and women participated in the sports. In some cases, the Japanese American baseball teams from the camps traveled to outside communities to play other teams. Incarcerees from Idaho competed in the state tournament in 1943, and there were games between the prison guards and the Japanese American teams.<ref name="Rafferty-Osaki">{{Cite web|url = http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Sports_and_recreation_in_camp/#Football|title = Sports and recreation in camp|date = 2015|accessdate = February 10, 2015|website = |publisher = Densho Encyclopedia|last = Rafferty-Osaki|first = Terumi}}</ref> [[Branch Rickey]], who would be responsible for bringing [[Jackie Robinson]] into Major League Baseball in 1947, sent a letter to all of the WRA camps expressing interest in [[scout (sport)|scouting]] some of the Nisei players. In fall of 1943, three players tried out for the [[Brooklyn Dodgers ]]<nowiki/> in front of MLB scout [[George Sisler]], however, none of them made the team.<ref name="Rafferty-Osaki"/>

===Student leave to attend Eastern colleges===
Although most Nisei college students followed their families into camp, a small number tried to arrange for transfers to schools outside the exclusion zone in order to continue their education. Their initial efforts expanded as sympathetic college administrators and the [[American Friends Service Committee]] began to coordinate a larger student relocation program. The Friends petitioned WRA Director Milton Eisenhower to place college students in Eastern and Midwestern academic institutions.  The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was formed on May 29, 1942, and the AFSC administered the program.<ref name=NJASRC>{{cite web|last=Austin |first=Allan W. |url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/National%20Japanese%20American%20Student%20Relocation%20Council/ |title=National Japanese American Student Relocation Council |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |accessdate=August 18, 2014}}</ref>
By September 1942, after the initial roundup of Japanese Americans, 250 students from assembly centers and WRA camps were back at school.{{citation needed|date=August 2014}} Their tuition, book costs and living expenses were absorbed by the U.S. government, private foundations and church scholarships, in addition to significant fundraising efforts led by Issei parents in camp. Outside camp, the students took on the role of "ambassadors of good will," and the NJASRC and WRA promoted this image to soften anti-Japanese prejudice and prepare the public for the resettlement of Japanese Americans in their communities.<ref name=NJASRC/> At [[Earlham College]], President William Dennis helped institute a program that enrolled several dozen Japanese-American students in order to spare them from incarceration. While this action was controversial in [[Richmond, IN|Richmond, Indiana]], it helped strengthen the college's ties to Japan and the Japanese-American community.<ref>[http://legacy.earlham.edu/~jpnstudies/documents/pdf/historical_brochure.pdf Historical brochure], Earlham College{{dead link|date=November 2012}}</ref> At [[Oberlin College]], about 40 evacuated Nisei students were enrolled. One of them, Kenji Okuda, was elected as student council president.<ref name="oberlin">{{Cite news
| issue = Winter
| pages = 12–17
| title = Oberlin vouches for them ...
| work = Oberlin Alumni Magazine
| accessdate = August 18, 2014
| year = 2013
| url = http://oberlin.edu/alummag/fall2013/internmentstudents.html
}}</ref> In total, over 600 institutions east of the exclusion zone opened their doors to more than 4,000 college-age youth who had been placed behind barbed wire, many of whom were enrolled in West Coast schools prior to their removal. The NJASRC ceased operations on June 7, 1946.<ref name=NJASRC/>

===Loyalty questions and segregation===
In late 1943, War Relocation Authority officials, working with the War Department and the Office of Naval Intelligence,<ref name='Lyon-LQ'>Cherstin M. Lyon. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Loyalty%20questionnaire/ "Loyalty questionnaire,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 14 Mar 2014).</ref> circulated a question form in an attempt to determine the loyalty of incarcerated Nisei men they hoped to recruit into military service. The "Statement of United States Citizen of Japanese Ancestry" was initially given only to Nisei who were eligible for service (or would have been, but for the 4-C classification imposed on them at the start of the war). Authorities soon revised the questionnaire and required all adults in camp to complete the form. Most of the 28 questions were designed to assess the "Americanness" of the respondent — had they been educated in Japan or the U.S.? were they Buddhist or Christian? did they practice ''[[judo]]'' or play on a baseball team?<ref name='Lyon-LQ'/> The final two questions on the form, which soon came to be known as the "loyalty questionnaire," were more direct: Question 27 asked whether an individual would be willing to serve in the armed forces (or, for women, the Auxiliary Corps), while Question 28 asked them to forswear their allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. Across the camps, persons who answered No to both questions became known as "No Nos."

While most camp inmates simply answered "yes" to both questions, several thousand — 17 percent of the total respondents, 20 percent of the Nisei<ref name='Lyon-Seg'>Cherstin M. Lyon. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Segregation/ "Segregation,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 14 Mar 2014).</ref> — gave negative or qualified replies out of confusion, fear or anger at the wording and implications of the questionnaire. In regard to Question 27, many worried that expressing a willingness to serve would be equated with volunteering for combat, while others felt insulted at being asked to risk their lives for a country that had imprisoned them and their families. An affirmative answer to Question 28 brought up other issues. Some believed that renouncing their loyalty to Japan would suggest that they had at some point been loyal to Japan and disloyal to the United States. Many believed they were to be deported to Japan no matter how they answered; they feared an explicit disavowal of the Emperor would become known and make such resettlement extremely difficult.

On July 15, 1943, Tule Lake, the site with the highest number of "no" responses to the questionnaire, was designated to house inmates whose answers suggested they were "disloyal".<ref name='Lyon-Seg'/> During the remainder of 1943 and into early 1944, more than 12,000 men, women and children were transferred from other camps to the maximum-security Tule Lake Segregation Center.

After these insults, the government passed the [[Renunciation Act of 1944]], a law that made it possible for Nisei and Kibei to [[Renunciation of citizenship|renounce their American citizenship]]. A total of 5,589 internees opted to do so; 5,461 of these were sent to Tule Lake.<ref name=tulelake>{{cite web|url=http://www.tulelake.org/2004-pilgrimage/ |title=Tule Lake Committee - tulelake.org |publisher=tulelake.org |accessdate=January 24, 2010}}</ref> Of those who renounced US citizenship, 1,327 were repatriated to Japan.<ref name=tulelake/> Those persons who stayed in the US faced discrimination from the Japanese-American community, both during and after the war, for having made that choice of renunciation. At the time, they feared what their futures held were they to remain American, and remain interned.<ref name=tulelake/>

These renunciations of American citizenship have been highly controversial, for a number of reasons. Some apologists for internment have cited the renunciations as evidence that "disloyalty" or [[anti-Americanism]] was well represented among the interned peoples, thereby justifying the internment.<ref>Malkin, Michelle. ''In Defense of Internment''. 2004, pages 111.</ref> Many historians have dismissed the latter argument, for its failure to consider that the small number of individuals in question had been mistreated and persecuted by their own government at the time of the "renunciation":<ref>Ng, Wendy L. ''Japanese American Internment During World War II''. 2002, page 61</ref><ref name=niiya293>Niiya, Brian. ''Japanese American History''. 1993, page 293</ref>

<blockquote>[T]he renunciations had little to do with "loyalty" or "disloyalty" to the United States, but were instead the result of a series of complex conditions and factors that were beyond the control of those involved. Prior to discarding citizenship, most or all of the renunciants had experienced the following misfortunes: forced removal from homes; loss of jobs; government and public assumption of disloyalty to the land of their birth based on race alone; and incarceration in a "segregation center" for "disloyal" ISSEI or NISEI...<ref name=niiya293 /></blockquote>

Minoru Kiyota, who was among those who renounced his citizenship and soon came to regret the decision, has said that he wanted only "to express my fury toward the government of the United States," for his internment and for the mental and physical duress, as well as the intimidation, he was made to face.<ref name=ngai>Ngai, Mae M. ''Impossible Subjects''. 2004, page 192</ref>

<blockquote>[M]y renunciation had been an expression of momentary emotional defiance in reaction to years of persecution suffered by myself and other Japanese Americans and, in particular, to the degrading interrogation by the FBI agent at [[Topaz War Relocation Center|Topaz]] and being terrorized by the guards and gangs at [[Tule Lake War Relocation Center|Tule Lake]].<ref>Kiyota, Minoru and Keenan, Linda Klepinger. ''Beyond Loyalty''. 1997, page 129</ref></blockquote>

Civil rights attorney [[Wayne M. Collins]] successfully challenged most of these renunciations as invalid, owing to the conditions of duress and intimidation under which the government obtained them.<ref name=ngai /><ref name=christgau>{{cite journal | last = Christgau | first = John | title = Collins versus the World: The Fight to Restore Citizenship to Japanese American Renunciants of World War II | journal=Pacific Historical Review | volume = 54 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–31 | publisher=University of California Press | date = February 1985 | jstor=3638863 | doi = 10.2307/3638863}}</ref> Many of the deportees were [[Issei]] (first generation) or Kibei, who often had difficulty with English and often did not understand the questions they were asked. Even among those Issei who had a clear understanding, Question 28 posed an awkward dilemma: Japanese immigrants were denied U.S. citizenship at the time, so when asked to renounce their Japanese citizenship, answering "Yes" would have made them [[Statelessness|stateless persons]].<ref>Yamamoto, Traise. ''Masking Selves, Making Subjects''. 1999, page 284</ref>

When the government began seeking army volunteers from among the camps, only 6% of military-aged male inmates volunteered to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.{{Citation needed|date=February 2007}} Most of those who refused tempered that refusal with statements of willingness to fight if they were restored their rights as American citizens. Eventually 20,000 Japanese-American men and many Japanese-American women served in the U.S. Army during World War II.<ref name="javadc.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.javadc.org/AJA%20women_in_wwII.htm|title=Japanese American women in World World II}}</ref>

[[File:442nd US Army RCT squad leader in france.jpg|thumb|left|The [[442nd Infantry Regiment (United States)|442nd Regimental Combat Team]], which was composed primarily of [[Japanese American]]s, served with uncommon distinction in the [[European Theatre of World War II]]. Many of the U.S. soldiers serving in the unit had families who were held in concentration camps in the United States while they fought abroad.]]
The [[442nd Infantry Regiment (United States)|442nd Regimental Combat Team]], which [[European Theatre of World War II|fought in Europe]], was formed from those Japanese Americans who agreed to serve. This unit was the most highly decorated U.S. military unit of its size and duration.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=1813|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20071104172145/http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=1813|archivedate=November 4, 2007 |title=President Clinton Approves Medal of Honor for Asian Pacific American World War II Heroes |publisher=US Army |date=May 12, 2000 |accessdate=October 20, 2008}}</ref> The 442nd's [[442nd Infantry Regiment (United States)#522nd Field Artillery Battalion|''Nisei'' segregated field artillery battalion]], then on detached service within the U.S. Army in Bavaria, liberated at least one of the satellite labor camps of the Nazis' original concentration camp at [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]] on April 29, 1945.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.goforbroke.org/history/history_historical_campaigns_central.asp | title=Central Europe Campaign - (522nd Field Artillery Battalion) | publisher=Go For Broke National Education Center}}</ref>

===Proving commitment to the United States===
Many Nisei worked to prove themselves as loyal American citizens. Of the 20,000 Japanese Americans who served in the Army during [[World War II]],<ref name="javadc.org"/> “many Japanese-American soldiers had gone to war to fight racism at home” <ref>Takaki, Ronald T. “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America”. Boston: Little, Brown &, 1993. Print, page 384.</ref> and they were “proving with their blood, their limbs, and their bodies that they were truly American,”.<ref>Takaki, Ronald T. “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America”. Boston: Little, Brown &, 1993. Print, page 385.</ref> It was not only men either, some one hundred Nisei women volunteered for the WAC (Woman's Army Corps), where, after undergoing rigorous basic training, they had assignments as typists, clerks, and drivers. <ref>Sandler, Martin. Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans during World War II. New York: Walker of Bloomsbury, 2013.</ref> Satoshi Ito, an internment camp survivor, reinforces the idea of the immigrants’ children striving to demonstrate their patriotism to the United States. He notes that his mother would tell him, “‘you’re here in the United States, you need to do well in school, you need to prepare yourself to get a good job when you get out into the larger society’”.<ref>Ito, Satoshi Interview. 01.MP3, “Ito Interview Interview Part 1”, [https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/1479], time 11:35.</ref> He said she would tell him, “‘don’t be a dumb farmer like me, like us’” <ref>Ito, Satoshi Interview. 01.MP3, “Ito Interview Interview Part 1”, [https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/1479], time 10:36.</ref> to encourage Ito to successfully assimilate into American society. As a result, he worked exceptionally hard to excel in school and later became a professor at the [[College of William & Mary]]. His story, along with the countless Japanese Americans willing to risk their lives in war, demonstrate the lengths many in their community went to prove their American patriotism.

===Other detention camps===
As early as 1939, when war broke out in Europe and while armed conflict began to rage in East Asia, the FBI and branches of the Department of Justice and the armed forces began to collect information and surveil  influential members of the Japanese community in the United States. These data were included in the [[Custodial Detention index]] (CDI). Agents in the Department of Justice's Special Defense Unit classified the subjects into three groups: A, B and C, with A being "most dangerous," and C being "possibly dangerous."

After the Pearl Harbor attacks, Roosevelt authorized his attorney general to put into motion a plan for the arrest of individuals on the potential enemy alien lists. Armed with a blanket arrest warrant, the FBI seized these men on the eve of December 8, 1941. These men were held in municipal jails and prisons until they were moved to Department of Justice detention camps, separate from those of the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA). These camps operated under far more stringent conditions and were subject to heightened criminal-style guards, despite the absence of criminal proceedings.

[[Crystal City, Texas]], was one such camp where Japanese Americans, [[German-American internment|German Americans]], [[Italian-American internment|Italian Americans]], and a large number of U.S.-seized, Axis-descended nationals from several Latin-American countries were interned.<ref name=texasarchive /><ref name=jla/>

The Canadian government also confined [[Japanese Canadian|citizens with Japanese ancestry]] during World War II (see [[Japanese Canadian internment]]), for much the same reasons of fear and prejudice. Some Latin American countries of the Pacific Coast, such as Peru, interned ethnic Japanese or sent them to the United States for internment.<ref name=jla/> Brazil also [[Japanese Brazilian#Prejudice and forced assimilation|restricted]] its [[Japanese Brazilian]]s.<ref name="ReferenceA">[[Agence France-Presse]]/[[Jiji Press]], "Peru sorry for WWII internments", ''[[Japan Times]]'', June 16, 2011, p. 2.</ref>

===Hawaii===
Although Japanese Americans in Hawaii comprised more than one third of the population, businessmen resisted their being interned or deported to mainland concentration camps, as they recognized their contributions to the economy.<ref>“The territorial governor of Hawaii, Joseph B. Poindexter, was more measured. He provided statistics indicating that 34 percent of the islands' population was aliens, or citizens of Japanese descent.” Frank, Richard B. "Zero Hour on Niihau," ''World War II'', 24: 2 (July 2009) p54.</ref> In the hysteria of the time, some mainland Congressmen (Hawaii was only a [[Territories of the United States|U.S. territory]] at the time, and did not have a voting representative or senator in Congress) promoted that all [[Japanese Americans]] and Japanese immigrants should be removed from Hawaii but were unsuccessful. An estimated 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese nationals and American-born Japanese from Hawaii were interned, either in five camps on the islands or in one of the mainland internment camps, but this represented well under two percent of the total Japanese American residents in the islands.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/reports-to-the-legislature/2008/2008/shpd/HP08-Japanese-Internment-Camp%20-Act163SLH07.pdf |title=Japanese Internment Camps In Hawaii |format=PDF |accessdate=December 5, 2011}}</ref>  “No serious explanations were offered as to why ... the internment of individuals of Japanese descent was necessary on the mainland, but not in Hawaii, where the large Japanese-Hawaiian population went largely unmolested.”<ref>Library of Congress. Behind the Wire</ref>

The vast majority of Japanese Americans and their immigrant parents in Hawaii were not interned because the government had already declared [[martial law]] in Hawaii and this allowed it to significantly reduce the supposed risk of espionage and sabotage by residents of Japanese ancestry.<ref name=Scheiber>Jane L. Scheiber, Harry N. Scheiber. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Martial%20law%20in%20Hawaii/ "Martial law in Hawaii,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved July 15, 2014.</ref> Also, Japanese Americans comprised over 35% of the territory's population, with 157,905 of Hawaii's 423,330 inhabitants at the time of the 1940 census,<ref>Gibson, Campbell and Kay, Jung. Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990</ref> making them the largest ethnic group at that time; detaining so many people would have been enormously challenging in terms of logistics. Additionally, the whole of Hawaiian society was dependent on their productivity. According to intelligence reports at the time, "the Japanese, through a concentration of effort in select industries, had achieved a virtual stranglehold on several key sectors of the economy in Hawaii,”<ref>Okihiro, Gary. ''Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945''. Temple University Press, 1st edition (January 8, 1992) p117.</ref> and they "had access to virtually all jobs in the economy, including high-status, high-paying jobs (e.g., professional and managerial jobs).”<ref>Chin, Aimee. "Long-Run Labor Market Effects of Japanese American Internment During World War II on Working-Age Male Internees," ''Journal of Labor Economics'', University of Houston (2004) p10.</ref>  To imprison such a large percentage of the islands' work force would have crippled the Hawaiian economy. Thus, the unfounded fear of Japanese Americans turning against the United States was overcome by the reality-based fear of massive economic loss.

Lieutenant General [[Delos C. Emmons]], commander of the Hawaii Department, promised the local Japanese-American community that they would be treated fairly so long as they remained loyal to the United States. He succeeded in blocking efforts to relocate them to the outer islands or mainland by pointing out the logistical difficulties.<ref>{{cite web|title=Guarding the United States and Its Outposts|url=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-WH-Guard/USA-WH-Guard-8.html|work=United States Army in World War II|publisher=United States Army Center of Military History|accessdate=November 7, 2011|author=Stetson Conn|coauthors=Rose C. Engelman and Byron Fairchild|date=May 1961}}</ref> Among the small number interned were community leaders and prominent politicians, including territorial legislators [[Thomas Sakakihara]] and [[Sanji Abe]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Sep/16/op/op06a.html|periodical=The Honolulu Advertiser|last=Dye|first=Bob|date=September 16, 2001|accessdate=December 23, 2009|title=How bigots 'cleansed' Legislature in 1942}}</ref>

A total of five internment camps operated in the territory of Hawaii, referred to as the "Hawaiian Island Detention Camps".<ref name="HA20051127">{{Cite news|url=http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Nov/27/ln/FP511270347.html|periodical=The Honolulu Advertiser|title=Wartime stain in history retraced in O'ahu's brush|last=Gordon|first=Mike|date=November 27, 2005|accessdate=December 10, 2009}}</ref><ref name="HA20060205">{{Cite news|url=http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Feb/05/ln/FP602050354.html|periodical=The Honolulu Advertiser|date=February 5, 2006|accessdate=December 10, 2009|last=Gordon|first=Mike|title=Under Honouliuli brush, dark history}}</ref> One camp was located at [[Sand Island (Hawaii)|Sand Island]] at the mouth of [[Honolulu]] Harbor. This camp was prepared in advance of the war's outbreak. All prisoners held here were "detained under military custody... because of the imposition of martial law throughout the Islands". Another Hawaiian camp was the [[Honouliuli Internment Camp]], near Ewa, on the southwestern shore of Oahu; it was opened in 1943 to replace the Sand Island camp. Another was located on the island of [[Maui]] in the town of [[Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii|Haiku]],<ref name="MT8207">{{Cite news|url=http://www.mauitime.com/Articles-i-2007-08-02-174168.112113-The-Camp.html|periodical=Maui time|title=The Camp|last=Greg Mebel|first=Anthony Pignataro|date=August 20, 2007|accessdate=April 4, 2011}}</ref> in addition to the Kilauea Detention Center on [[Hawaii (island)|Hawaii]] and Camp Kalaheo on [[Kauai]].<ref>[http://archives.starbulletin.com/content/20091207_exhibit_shows_the_harsh_life_of_honouliuli_internment_camp]</ref>

===Japanese Latin Americans===
<!-- Some of the following taken from http://www.nps.gov/manz/ccdoj.htm which is a US government source and public domain -->During World War II, over 2,200 Japanese from Latin America were held in internment camps run by the [[Immigration and Naturalization Service]], part of the Department of Justice. Beginning in 1942, Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and transported to American internment camps run by the INS and the U.S. Justice Department.<ref name="niiya" /><ref name="OCLC 606835431">Connell, Thomas. (2002). ''America's Japanese Hostages: The US Plan For A Japanese Free Hemisphere.'' [http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Japanese-Hostages-Peruvian-Identities/dp/0275975355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372771369&sr=8-1&keywords=america%27s+japanese+hostages] Westport: [[Praeger-Greenwood]]. ISBN 9780275975357; [http://www.worldcat.org/title/americas-japanese-hostages-the-world-war-ii-plan-for-a-japanese-free-latin-america/oclc/48620417&referer=brief_results OCLC 606835431]</ref><ref>Robinson, Greg. (2001). [http://books.google.com/books?id=GCFT3SXwsWQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Gregg+Robinson&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA14,M1 ''By Order of the President:FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans,'' p. 264n2] citing C. Harvey Gardiner, ''Pawns in a Triangle of Hate'' (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981).</ref><ref name="search.japantimes.co.jp">Nanami, Masaharu ([[Kyodo News]]), "[http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090916f2.html Japanese-Peruvians still angry over wartime internment in U.S. camps]," ''[[Japan Times]]'', Sep 16, 2009.</ref> The majority of these internees, approximately 1,800, came from Peru. An additional 250 were from Panama, and Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.<ref name="Mak">Stephen Mak. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Japanese%20Latin%20Americans/ "Japanese Latin Americans,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed Mar 5, 2014).</ref>

The first group of Japanese Latin Americans arrived in San Francisco on April 20, 1942, on board the ''Etolin'' along with 360 ethnic Germans and 14 ethnic Italians from Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.<ref name='Gardiner.25-29'>C. Harvey Gardiner. ''Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States'' (University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1981), 25-29.</ref> The 151 men — ten from Ecuador, the rest from Peru — had volunteered for deportation believing they were to be repatriated to Japan. They were denied visas by U.S. Immigration authorities and then detained on the grounds they had tried to enter the country illegally, without a visa or passport.<ref name='Gardiner.25-29'/> Subsequent transports brought additional "volunteers," including the wives and children of men who had been deported earlier. A total of 2,264 Japanese Latin Americans, about two-thirds of them from Peru, were interned in facilities on the U.S. mainland during the war.<ref name=niiya/><ref name='Mak'/><ref>Connel, Thomas. ''America's Japanese Hostages'': 2002, pp 145-8</ref>

The United States originally intended to trade these Latin American internees as part of a hostage exchange program with Japan and other Axis nations.<ref>[http://www.nps.gov/manz/ccdoj.htm "Department of Justice and U.S. Army Facilities"], [[U.S. National Park Service]]. Retrieved August 31, 2006.</ref> A thorough examination of the documents shows at least one trade occurred.<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/> Over 1,300 persons of Japanese ancestry were exchanged for a like number of non-official Americans in October 1943, at the port of Marmagao, India. Over half were Japanese Latin Americans (the rest being ethnic Germans and Italians) and of that number one-third were Japanese Peruvians.

On September 2, 1943, the Swedish ship ''MS Gripsholm'' departed the U.S. with just over 1,300 Japanese nationals (including nearly a hundred from Canada and Mexico) en route for the exchange location, Marmagao, the main port of the Portuguese colony of [[Goa]] on the west coast of India.<ref>Connell, Thomas. ''America's Japanese Hostages: The US Plan For A Japanese Free Hemisphere'': 2002, Table 13-1 [http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Japanese-Hostages-Peruvian-Identities/dp/0275975355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372771369&sr=8-1&keywords=america%27s+japanese+hostages] Westport: [[Praeger-Greenwood]]. ISBN 9780275975357; [http://www.worldcat.org/title/americas-japanese-hostages-the-world-war-ii-plan-for-a-japanese-free-latin-america/oclc/48620417&referer=brief_results OCLC 606835431]</ref>
<ref>Elleman, Bruce. (2006) Japanese-American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941-45 http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-American-Civilian-Exchanges-Detention-Routledge/dp/0415331889/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372958677&sr=1-1&keywords=Japanese-American+Civilian+Prisoner+Exchanges+and+Detention+Camps%2C+1941-45 ISBN 978-0-415-33188-3; [http://www.worldcat.org/title/japanese-american-civilian-prisoner-exchanges-and-detention-camps-1941-45/oclc/70960870&referer=brief_results]</ref> After two more stops in South America to take on additional Japanese nationals, the passenger manifest reached 1,340.<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/> Of that number, Latin American Japanese numbered 55 percent of the Gripsholm's travelers, 30 percent of whom were Japanese Peruvian.<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/> Arriving in Marmagao on October 16, 1943, the Gripsholm's passengers disembarked and then boarded the Japanese ship ''Teia Maru.'' In return, "non-official" Americans (secretaries, butlers, cooks, embassy staff workers, etc.) previously held by the Japanese Army boarded the ''Gripsholm'' while the ''Teia Maru'' headed for Tokyo.<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/>  Because this exchange was done with those of Japanese ancestry officially described as "volunteering" to return to Japan, no legal challenges were encountered. The U.S. Department of State was pleased with the first trade and immediately began to arrange a second exchange of non-officials for February 1944. This exchange would involve 1,500 non-volunteer Japanese who were to be exchanged for 1,500 Americans.<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/> The US was busy with Pacific Naval activity and future trading plans stalled.  Further slowing the program were legal and political "turf" battles between the State Department, the Roosevelt administration, and the DOJ, whose officials were not convinced of the legality of the program.

The completed October 1943 trade took place at the height of the [[Enemy Alien Deportation Program]]. Japanese Peruvians were still being "rounded up" for shipment to the U.S. in previously unseen numbers. Despite logistical challenges facing the floundering prisoner exchange program, deportation plans were moving ahead. This is partly explained by an early-in-the-war revelation of the overall goal for Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry under the Enemy Alien Deportation Program.  The goal: that the hemisphere was to be free of Japanese.  Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote an agreeing President Roosevelt, "[that the US must] continue our efforts to remove all the Japanese from these American Republics for internment in the United States."<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/><ref>Correspondence, Secretary of State to President Roosevelt, 740.00115 European War 1939/4476, PS/THH, August 27, 1942.</ref>

"Native" Peruvians expressed extreme animosity toward their Japanese citizens and expatriates, and Peru refused to accept the post-war return of Japanese Peruvians from the US. Although a small number asserting special circumstances, such as marriage to a non-Japanese Peruvian,<ref name=niiya/> did return, the majority were trapped. Their home country refused to take them back (a political stance Peru would maintain until 1950<ref name='Mak'/>), they were generally Spanish speakers in the Anglo US, and in the postwar U.S., the Department of State started expatriating them to Japan. [[ACLU]] lawyer [[Wayne M. Collins|Wayne Collins]] filed injunctions on behalf of the remaining internees,<ref name=jla>Densho, The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. [http://www.densho.org/learning/spice/lesson4/4activity4-7handouts.pdf "Japanese Latin Americans,"] c. 2003, accessed April 12, 2009.</ref><ref name=sfjhw>{{cite web | title=Japanese Americans, the Civil Rights Movement and Beyond|url=http://www.nddcreative.com/sfjhw/sfjhw_pdf/sfjhw_sign2.pdf| accessdate=April 10, 2009}}</ref> helping them obtain "[[parole]]" relocation to the labor-starved [[Seabrook, New Jersey|Seabrook Farms]] in New Jersey.<ref>Higashide, Seiichi. (2000).[http://books.google.com/books?id=ORE5wfUNdccC&pg=PA193&dq=Adios+to+Tears:+The+Memoirs+of+a+Japanese-Peruvian+Internee+in+U.S.+Concentration+Camps&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0#PPA179,M1 ''Adios to Tears,'' p. 179.]</ref> He started a legal battle that would not be resolved until 1953, when, after working as undocumented immigrants for almost ten years, those Japanese Peruvians remaining in the U.S. were finally offered citizenship.<ref name="OCLC 606835431"/><ref name='Mak'/>

===Internment ends===
On December 18, 1944, the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] handed down two decisions on the legality of the incarceration under Executive Order 9066. ''[[Korematsu v. United States]]'', a 6–3 decision upholding a Nisei's conviction for violating the military exclusion order, stated that, in general, the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast was constitutional. However, ''[[Ex parte Endo]]'' unanimously declared that loyal citizens of the United States, regardless of cultural descent, could not be detained without cause. In effect, the two rulings held that, while the eviction of U.S. citizens in the name of military necessity was legal, the subsequent incarceration was not — thus paving the way for their release.

Although WRA Director Dillon Myer and others had pushed for an earlier end to the incarceration, the exclusion order was not rescinded until January 2, 1945 (postponed until after the November 1944 election, so as not to impede Roosevelt's reelection campaign).<ref>{{cite web|last=Niiya |first=Brian |url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Franklin%20D.%20Roosevelt/ |title=Franklin D. Roosevelt |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |accessdate=January 27, 2015}}</ref> Many younger internees had already "resettled" in Midwest or Eastern cities to pursue work or educational opportunities. The remaining population began to leave the camps to try to rebuild their lives at home. Former inmates were given $25 and a train ticket to their pre-war places of residence, but many had little or nothing to return to, having lost their homes and businesses. Some emigrated to Japan, although many of these individuals were "repatriated" against their will.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigations/202_tulelakefeature.html|title=PBS Investigations of the Tule Lake Camp. Retrieved August&nbsp;24, 2007.}}</ref><ref>Tule Lake Committee, "[http://www.tulelake.org History]." Retrieved January 27, 2015.</ref> The camps remained open for residents who were not ready to return (mostly elderly Issei and families with young children), but the WRA pressured stragglers to leave by gradually eliminating services in camp. Those who had not left by each camp's close date were forcibly removed and sent back to the West Coast.<ref>{{cite web|last=Robinson |first=Greg |url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/War%20Relocation%20Authority/ |title=War Relocation Authority |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |accessdate=January 27, 2015}}</ref>

Nine of the ten WRA camps were shut down by the end of 1945, although Tule Lake, which held "renunciants" slated for deportation to Japan, was not closed until March 20, 1946.<ref>"Japanese Americans Internment Camps During World War II," [http://web.archive.org/web/20070619073757/http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo/9066/9066.htm Library web page at Utah.edu]. Retrieved October 1, 2006.</ref> Japanese Latin Americans brought to the U.S. from Peru and other countries, who were still being held in the DOJ camps at Santa Fe and Crystal City, took legal action in April 1946 in an attempt to avoid deportation to Japan.<ref>{{Cite book
 |first=Thomas
 |last=Connell
 |title=America's Japanese Hostages: The World War II Plan for a Japanese Free Latin America
 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group
 |year=2002
 |isbn=0-275-97535-5
 |page=223}}</ref>

Following recognition of the injustices done to the Japanese Americans, in 1992 [[Manzanar Japanese internment camp|Manzanar camp]] was designated a [[National Historic Sites (United States)|National Historic Site]] to "provide for the protection and interpretation of historic, cultural, and natural resources associated with the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II" (Public Law 102-248). In 2001, the site of the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho was designated the [[Minidoka National Historic Site]].

==Hardship and material loss==
[[File:Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado. Not all the center residents will return to their form . . . - NARA - 539932.jpg|thumb|Graveyard at Granada Relocation Center, in Amache, Colorado.]]
[[Image:Manzanar shrine.jpg|thumb|A monument at Manzanar, "to console the souls of the dead."]]
Many internees lost irreplaceable personal property due to restrictions that prohibited them from taking more than they could carry into the camps. These losses were compounded by theft and destruction of items placed in governmental storage. Leading up to their incarceration, Nikkei were prohibited from leaving the Military Zones or traveling more than {{convert|5|mi}} from home, forcing those who had to travel for work, like truck farmers and residents of rural towns, to quit their jobs.<ref>[http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/intern1.html "Enemy Alien Curfew Friday: German, Japs, Italians in New Restrictions"] (March 24, 1942), ''The San Francisco News''. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref> Many others were simply fired for their "Jap" heritage.<ref>Long, Priscilla. [http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=3642 "Seattle School Board accepts the forced resignation of Japanese American teachers on February 27, 1942"] (November 25, 2001), HistoryLink.org. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref><ref>Hall, Carla. [http://articles.latimes.com/1998/feb/28/local/me-23915 "Japanese Fired in WWII Win Redress"] (February 28, 1998), ''Los Angeles Times''. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref><ref>Hirai, Tomo. [http://www.nichibei.org/2013/09/state-legislature-passes-resolution-apologizing-to-fired-employees/ "State Legislature passes resolution apologizing to fired employees"] (September 5, 2013) ''Nichi Bei Weekly''. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref>

Alien land laws in the West Coast states barred the Issei from owning their pre-war homes and farms. Many had cultivated land for decades as [[tenant farmer]]s, but they lost their rights to farm those lands when they were forced to leave. Other Issei (and Nisei who were renting or had not completed payments on their property) had found families willing to occupy their homes or tend their farms during their incarceration. However, those unable to strike a deal with caretakers had to sell their property, often in a matter of days and at great financial loss to predatory land speculators, who made huge profits.

In addition to these monetary and property losses, a number of persons {{Who|date=January 2015}} died or suffered for lack of medical care in camp. Seven were shot and killed by sentries: Kanesaburo Oshima, 58, during an escape attempt from Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Toshio Kobata, 58, and Hirota Isomura, 59, during transfer to Lordsburg, New Mexico; James Ito, 17, and Katsuji James Kanegawa, 21,  during the December 1942 [[Manzanar#Resistance|Manzanar Riot]]; James Hatsuaki Wakasa, 65, while walking near the perimeter wire of Topaz; and Shoichi James Okamoto, 30, during a verbal altercation with a sentry at the Tule Lake Segregation Center.<ref>Kashima, Tetsuden. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Homicide%20in%20camp/ "Homicide in Camp,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref>

Psychological injury was observed by [[Dillon S. Myer]], director of the WRA camps. In June 1945, Myer described how the Japanese Americans had grown increasingly depressed, and overcome with feelings of helplessness and personal insecurity.<ref name="Myer">"The WRA says Thirty," ''New Republic'' 112, pp. 867–68.</ref> Author Betty Furuta explains that the Japanese used ''[[Gaman (term)|gaman]],'' loosely meaning "perseverance", to overcome hardships; this was mistaken by non-Japanese as being introverted and lacking initiative.<ref>{{cite book|last=Niiya|first=Brian|url=http://books.google.com/?id=QZg6Ft_jvJ0C&pg=PA143&dq=gaman+japan#v=onepage&q=gaman%20japan&f=false|title=Japanese American history : an A-to-Z reference from 1868 to the present|year=1993|publisher=Facts On File|location=New York, NY|isbn=0-8160-2680-7|page=143}}</ref>

Japanese Americans also encountered hostility and even violence when they returned to the West Coast. Concentrated largely in rural areas of Central California, there were dozens of reports of gun shots, fires, and explosions aimed at Japanese American homes, businesses and places of worship, in addition to non-violent crimes like vandalism and the defacing of Japanese graves. In one of the only cases to go to trial, four men were accused of attacking the Doi family of [[Placer County, California]], setting off an explosion and starting a fire on the family's farm in January 1945. Despite a confession from one of the men that implicated the others, the jury accepted their defense attorney's framing of the attack as a justifiable attempt to keep California "a white man's country" and acquitted all four defendants.<ref>Niiya, Brian. [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Terrorist%20incidents%20against%20West%20Coast%20returnees/ "Terrorist incidents against West Coast returnees,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia''. Retrieved February 5, 2015.</ref>

To compensate former internees for their property losses, the [[US Congress]], on July 2, 1948, passed the "American Japanese Claims Act," allowing Japanese Americans to apply for compensation for property losses which occurred as "a reasonable and natural consequence of the evacuation or exclusion." By the time the Act was passed, the [[Internal Revenue Service|IRS]] had already destroyed most of the internees' 1939–42 tax records. Due to the time pressure and strict limits on how much they could take to the camps, few were able to preserve detailed tax and financial records during the evacuation process. Therefore, it was extremely difficult for claimants to establish that their claims were valid. Under the Act, Japanese American families filed 26,568 claims totaling $148&nbsp;million in requests; about $37&nbsp;million was approved and disbursed.<ref>Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, ''[http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/personal_justice_denied/chap4.htm Personal Justice Denied]'', Chapter 4</ref>

==Reparations and redress==
{{See also|Japanese American redress and court cases}}

Beginning in the 1960s, a younger generation of Japanese Americans, inspired by the [[Civil Rights movement]], began what is known as the "Redress Movement," an effort to obtain an official apology and reparations from the federal government for incarcerating their parents and grandparents during the war. They focused not on documented property losses but on the broader injustice and mental suffering caused by the internment. The movement's first success was in 1976, when President [[Gerald Ford]] proclaimed that the internment was "wrong," and a "national mistake" which "shall never again be repeated".<ref>Stone, Geoffrey R. ''Perilous Times''. 2004, page 305</ref>

The campaign for redress was launched by Japanese Americans in 1978. The [[Japanese American Citizens League]] (JACL), which had cooperated with the administration during the war, became part of the movement. It asked for three measures: $25,000 to be awarded to each person who was detained, an apology from Congress acknowledging publicly that the U.S. government had been wrong, and the release of funds to set up an educational foundation for the children of Japanese-American families.

In 1980, Congress established the [[Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians]] (CWRIC) to study the matter. On February 24, 1983, the commission issued a report entitled ''Personal Justice Denied'', condemning the internment as unjust and motivated by racism and xenophobic ideas rather than factual military necessity.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/personal_justice_denied/intro.htm |title=Personal Justice Denied, www.nps.gov |publisher=Nps.gov |date=January 8, 2007 |accessdate=April 1, 2015}}</ref> The Commission recommended that $20,000 in reparations be paid to those Japanese Americans who had suffered internment.

[[File:Ronald Reagan signing Japanese reparations bill.jpg|thumb|left|U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs the [[Civil Liberties Act of 1988]], which granted reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans.]]
In 1988, U.S. President [[Ronald Reagan]] signed the [[Civil Liberties Act of 1988]], which had been sponsored by Representative [[Norman Mineta]] and Senator [[Alan K. Simpson]], who had met while Mineta was interned at [[Heart Mountain Relocation Center]] in [[Wyoming]]. It provided financial redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2&nbsp;billion. The question of to whom reparations should be given, how much, and even whether monetary reparations were appropriate were subjects of sometimes contentious debate within the Japanese-American community and Congress.<ref>Hatamiya, Leslie T. ''Righting a Wrong''. 1994, page 108-9</ref>

On September 27, 1992, the [[Civil Liberties Act Amendments of 1992]], appropriating an additional $400&nbsp;million to ensure all remaining internees received their $20,000 redress payments, was signed into law by President [[George H. W. Bush]]. He issued another formal apology from the U.S. government on December 7, 1991, on the 50th-Anniversary of the [[Attack on Pearl Harbor|Pearl Harbor Attack]], saying:
<blockquote>"In remembering, it is important to come to grips with the past. No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces of its past. We in the United States acknowledge such an injustice in our history. The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated."</blockquote>

Under the 2001 budget of the United States, Congress authorized that the ten detention sites are to be preserved as historical landmarks: “places like Manzanar, Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, Topaz, Amache, Jerome, and Rohwer will forever stand as reminders that this nation failed in its most sacred duty to protect its citizens against prejudice, greed, and political expediency”.<ref>Tateishi and Yoshino 2000</ref>

On January 30, 2011, California first observed an annual "[[Fred Korematsu]] Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution", the first such commemoration for an [[Asian American]] in the U.S.<ref name="ti">{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2045111,00.html|title=California Marks the First Fred Korematsu Day|last=Liu|first=Ling Woo|date=January 29, 2011|work=TIME|accessdate=January 31, 2011}}</ref>  On June 14, 2011, Peruvian president [[Alan García]] apologized for his country's internment of Japanese immigrants during World War II, most of whom were transferred to the United States.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

==Legal legacy==
[[File:Manzanar Relocation Center, Manzanar, California. Grandfather and grandson of Japanese ancestry at . . . - NARA - 537992.jpg|thumb|Grandfather and grandson at Manzanar, July 2, 1942.]]

Several significant legal decisions arose out of Japanese-American internment, relating to the powers of the government to detain citizens in wartime. Among the cases which reached the US Supreme Court were ''[[Yasui v. United States]]'' (1943), ''[[Hirabayashi v. United States]]'' (1943), ''[[ex parte Endo]]'' (1944), and ''[[Korematsu v. United States]]'' (1944). In ''Yasui'' and ''Hirabayashi,'' the court upheld the constitutionality of curfews based on Japanese ancestry; in ''Korematsu,'' the court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion order. In ''Endo'', the court accepted a petition for a [[writ of habeas corpus]] and ruled that the WRA had no authority to subject a loyal citizen to its procedures.

Korematsu's and Hirabayashi's convictions were vacated in a series of ''[[coram nobis]]'' cases in the early 1980s.<ref name="Irons">{{cite book | author=Irons, Peter. | title=Justice At War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases | publisher=University of Washington Press | origyear=1976| year=1996 | isbn=0-520-08312-1}}</ref> In the ''coram nobis'' cases, federal district and appellate courts ruled that newly uncovered evidence revealed an unfairness which, had it been known at the time, would likely have changed the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court's]] decisions in the Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu cases.<ref name=korematsu_majority/><ref name=hirabayashi/>

These new court decisions rested on a series of documents recovered from the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]] showing that the government had altered, suppressed and withheld important and relevant information from the Supreme Court, including the Final Report by General DeWitt justifying the internment program.<ref name="Irons"/> The Army had destroyed documents in an effort to hide the fact that alterations had been made to the report to reduce their racist content.<ref name=hirabayashi/> The ''coram nobis'' cases vacated the convictions of Korematsu and Hirabayashi (Yasui died before his case was heard, rendering it moot), and are regarded as part of the impetus to gain passage of the [[Civil Liberties Act of 1988]].<ref name="Irons"/>

The rulings of the US Supreme Court in the Korematsu and Hirabayashi cases, specifically in its expansive interpretation of government powers in wartime, have yet to be overturned. They are still the law of the land because a lower court cannot overturn a ruling by the US Supreme Court. The ''coram nobis'' cases totally undermined the factual underpinnings of the 1944 cases, leaving the original decisions without much logical basis.<ref name="Irons"/> As these 1944 decisions prevail, a number of legal scholars have expressed the opinion that the original Korematsu and Hirabayashi decisions have taken on renewed relevance in the context of the [[War on Terror]].

Former [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] Justice [[Tom C. Clark]], who represented the US Department of Justice in the "relocation," writes in the epilogue to the 1992 book ''Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans'':<ref>Conrat, Maisie and Conrat, Richard. ''Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans''.</ref>

{{quotation|
The truth is—as this deplorable experience proves—that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves...Despite the unequivocal language of the [[United States Constitution|Constitution of the United States]] that the [[writ of habeas corpus]] shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both of these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://asianamericanbooks.com/books/1990.htm |title=Asian American Books.com, quote from back cover |publisher=Asianamericanbooks.com |accessdate=January 24, 2010}}</ref>
}}

==Terminology debate==
Since the end of World War II, there has been debate over the terminology used to refer to camps in which [[Japanese Americans|Americans of Japanese ancestry]] and their immigrant parents, were incarcerated by the [[United States Government]] during the war.<ref name = "ManzanarControversy">{{cite web | title = The Manzanar Controversy | url = http://www.pbs.org/weekendexplorer/california/mammoth/manzanar.htm | publisher = Public Broadcasting System | accessdate = July 18, 2007 }}</ref><ref name = "DanielsTerminology">{{cite journal | last = Daniels | first = Roger | title = Incarceration of the Japanese Americans: A Sixty-Year Perspective | journal = The History Teacher | volume = 35 | issue = 3 | pages = 4–6 |date=May 2002 | url = http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/35.3/daniels.html| accessdate =  July 18, 2007 | doi = 10.2307/3054440 | jstor = 3054440}}</ref><ref name = "Ito-MotherJones">{{cite news | last = Ito | first = Robert | title = Concentration Camp Or Summer Camp? | publisher = Mother Jones | date = September 15, 1998 | url = http://motherjones.com/politics/1998/09/concentration-camp-or-summer-camp | accessdate = November 18, 2010}}</ref> These camps have been referred to as "War Relocation Centers," "relocation camps," "relocation centers," "[[internment camp]]s", and "[[concentration camp]]s", and the controversy over which term is the most accurate and appropriate continues to the present day.<ref name = "Aiko-Words"/><ref name = "Reflectionsiii–iv">{{cite book | title = Reflections: Three Self-Guided Tours Of Manzanar | publisher = Manzanar Committee | year = 1998 | pages = iii–iv}}</ref><ref name="CLPEF">{{cite web | title=CLPEF Resolution Regarding Terminology | publisher=Civil Liberties Public Education Fund | url=http://www.momomedia.com/CLPEF/backgrnd.html#Link%20to%20terminology | year=1996 | accessdate=July 20, 2007 }}</ref><ref name = "DenshoTerminology">{{cite web | title = Densho: Terminology & Glossary: A Note On Terminology | publisher = Densho | url = http://www.densho.org/default.asp?path=/assets/sharedpages/glossary.asp?section=home | year = 1997 | accessdate = July 15, 2007 }}</ref>

Dr. James Hirabayashi, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of Ethnic Studies at [[San Francisco State University]], wrote an article in 1994 in which he stated that he wonders why euphemistic terms are still used to describe these camps.<ref name = "Hirabayashi">{{cite journal | last = Hirabayashi, Ph.D. | first = James | title = "Concentration Camp" or "Relocation Center" – What's in a Name? | journal =  Japanese American National Museum Quarterly | volume = 9 | issue = 3 | year = 1994 | url = http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2008/4/24/enduring-communities | accessdate = November 18, 2010 }}</ref>

In 1998, use of the term "concentration camps" gained greater credibility prior to the opening of an exhibit about the American camps at [[Ellis Island]]. Initially, the [[American Jewish Committee]] (AJC) and the National Park Service, which manages Ellis Island, objected to the use of the term in the exhibit.<ref name = "NYTimes-Debate">{{cite news | last = Sengupta | first = Somini | title = What Is a Concentration Camp? Ellis Island Exhibit Prompts a Debate | publisher = New York Times | url = http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/08/nyregion/what-is-a-concentration-camp-ellis-island-exhibit-prompts-a-debate.html | date = March 8, 1998 | accessdate = July 11, 2011}}</ref> However, during a subsequent meeting held at the offices of the AJC in New York City, leaders representing Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans reached an understanding about the use of the term.<ref name = "McCarthy-Human Quest">{{cite journal | last = McCarthy | first = Sheryl | title = Suffering Isn't One Group's Exclusive Privilege | journal = HumanQuest | date = July–August 1999}}</ref>

The ''[[New York Times]]'' published an unsigned editorial supporting the use of "concentration camp" in the exhibit.<ref name = "NYTOp-Ed">{{cite news | title = Words for Suffering | publisher = New York Times | url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F06EEDF1230F933A25750C0A96E958260 | date = March 10, 1998 | accessdate = December 31, 2007}}</ref>  An article quoted Jonathan Mark, a columnist for ''[[The Jewish Week]]'', who wrote, "Can no one else speak of slavery, gas, trains, camps? It's Jewish malpractice to monopolize pain and minimize victims."<ref name = "Defending-Lexicon">{{cite news | last = Haberman | first = Clyde | title = NYC; Defending Jews' Lexicon Of Anguish | publisher = New York Times | url = http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/13/nyregion/nyc-defending-jews-lexicon-of-anguish.html | date = March 13, 1998 | accessdate = July 11, 2011}}</ref>  AJC Executive Director David A. Harris stated during the controversy, "We have not claimed Jewish exclusivity for the term 'concentration camps.'"<ref name = "HarrisLetter">{{cite news | last = Harris | first = David A | title = Exhibition on Camps | publisher = New York Times | url = http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/13/opinion/l-exhibition-on-camps-998206.html | date = March 13, 1998 | accessdate = July 11, 2011}}</ref>

On July 7, 2012, at their annual convention, the National Council of the [[Japanese American Citizens League]] unanimously ratified the ''Power of Words Handbook,'' calling for the use of  "...truthful and accurate terms, and retiring the misleading euphemisms created by the government to cover up the denial of Constitutional and human rights, the force, oppressive conditions, and racism against 120,000 innocent people of Japanese ancestry locked up in America's World War II concentration camps." <ref name = "PowerOfWords">{{cite news | last = Noguchi | first = Andy | title = JACL Ratifies Power Of Words Handbook: What Are The Next Steps? | publisher = Japanese American Citizens League via the Manzanar Committee | url = http://blog.manzanarcommittee.org/2012/07/15/jacl-ratifies-power-of-words-handbook-what-are-the-next-steps | date = 2012-07-15 | accessdate = 2012-07-22}}</ref>

==Expulsions and population transfers of World War II==
{{Main|World War II evacuation and expulsion|Population transfers in the Soviet Union}}
The internment of Japanese Americans has sometimes been compared to the persecutions, expulsions, and dislocations of other ethnic minorities in the context of World War II, in Europe and Asia.<ref name=ms /><ref name=mr /><ref name=mkr /><ref name=mm /> An estimated 500,000 [[Volga Germans]] were rounded up and deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, with many of them dying en route.<ref name=ms>Maxim Shrayer (2007). "''[http://books.google.com/books?id=TSXYMF3RNEYC&pg=PA30&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false Waiting for America: a story of emigration]''". Syracuse University Press. p.30. ISBN 0-8156-0893-4</ref> In 1942, nearly all the able-bodied German population was conscripted to the NKVD labor columns. About one-third did not survive the camps.<ref name="conquest59">Robert Conquest, ''The Nation Killers'' (Macmillan, 1970), pages 59-61.</ref>
The Volga Germans were deported prior to the [[Battle of Stalingrad]], as they were regarded, in the "war hysteria of the moment", as a potential "[[Fifth Column]]".<ref name=mr>Michael Rywkin (1994). "''[http://books.google.com/books?id=dufZDXtYaV4C&pg=PA66&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false Moscow's lost empire]''". M.E. Sharpe. p.66. ISBN 1-56324-237-0.</ref>

In 1944, the Red Army rounded up about 500,000 [[Chechens]] and [[Ingushes]] for relocation; a third of this population perished in the first year, from starvation, cold, and disease.<ref name=mkr>Mohit Kumar Ray, Rama Kundu, Pradip Kumar Dey (2005). "''[http://books.google.com/books?id=wIC9cdVrAnwC&pg=PA150&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false Widening horizons: essays in honour of Professor Mohit K. Ray]''". Sarup & Sons. p.150. ISBN 81-7625-598-X</ref> Other nationalities which faced ethnic cleansing for having been identified as potential collaborators with the Germans were the [[Balkars]], [[Crimean Tatars]], [[Karachays|Karachi]], [[Kalmyks]], and [[Meskheti]]ans.<ref name=mm>Michael Mann (2005). "''[http://books.google.com/books?id=cGHGPgj1_tIC&pg=PA328&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing]''". Cambridge University Press. p.328.
ISBN 0-521-53854-8</ref>

==Exhibitions and collections==
The [[Smithsonian Institution]]'s [[National Museum of American History]] has more than 800 artifacts from its A More Perfect Union collection available online. Archival photography, publications, original manuscripts, artworks, and handmade objects comprise the collection of items related to the [[Japanese American]] experience.<ref name="Smithsonian">{{cite web|url=http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/collection/index.html |title=A More Perfect Union Collection Search |publisher=National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution |accessdate=April 24, 2012}}</ref>

On October 1, 1987, the [[Smithsonian Institution]] [[National Museum of American History]] opened an exhibition called, "A More Perfect Union: [[Japanese Americans]] and the [[U.S. Constitution]]." The exhibition examined the Constitutional process by considering the experiences of Americans of Japanese ancestry before, during, and after World War II. On view were more than 1,000 artifacts and photographs relating to the experiences of [[Japanese Americans]] during [[World War II]]. The exhibition closed on January 11, 2004. On November 8, 2011, the [[National Museum of American History]] launched an online exhibition of the same name with shared content.<ref name="Smithsonian Online">{{cite web|url=http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/experience/index.html |title=A More Perfect Union Online Exhibition |publisher=National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution |accessdate=April 24, 2012}}</ref>

On April 16, 2013, the [[Japanese American Internment Museum]] was opened in McGehee, Arkansas regarding the history at two internment camps.

==Representation in other media==
{{refimprove section | date=March 2015}}
*[[John Okada]]'s novel ''[[No-No Boy]]'' (1956) features a protagonist from Seattle, who was interned with his family and imprisoned for answering "no" to the last two questions on the loyalty questionnaire. It explores the postwar environment in the Pacific Northwest.{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}

*Joseph Yoshinobu Takagi (played by [[James Shigeta]]) is a character in the film ''[[Die Hard]]'' (1988) who was "interned at Manzanar from 1942 to 1943," according to main antagonist Hans Gruber (played by [[Alan Rickman]]).{{citation needed|date=July 2014}}

*In Billy Bragg's 1991 album ''[[Don't Try This at Home (Billy Bragg album)|Don't Try This At Home]]'', the song "Everywhere" is told by a young Marine in the Philippines during WWII, remembering a Japanese-American friend who was interned.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

*Folk/country musician [[Tom Russell]] wrote "Manzanar", a song about the Japanese American incarceration, which was released on his album ''Box of Visions'' (1993).<ref name = "Billboard.com">{{cite web | title = Box of Visions – Tom Russell (1993) | url = http://www.billboard.com/song/tom-russell/manzanar/11908130#/album/tom-russell/box-of-visions/144904 | publisher = Billboard | date = April 10, 2003 | accessdate = May 2, 2010}}</ref>

*Both the 1994 novel ''[[Snow Falling on Cedars]]'' and its 1999 [[Snow Falling on Cedars (film)|film adaptation]] refer to the internment of the Imada family in Manzanar.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

°The 2002 novel '[[When the Emperor was Divine|'When the Emperor was Divine'']] by Julie Otsuka tells the story of an unnamed Japanese family who was incarcerated at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. The novel is based on Otsuka's own family's experiences.{{citation needed|date=March 2015}}

*[[Fort Minor]]'s 2005 album ''[[The Rising Tied]]'' contains a track entitled "Kenji", which relates the tale of a Japanese American family's experience during the internment period. Lead singer [[Mike Shinoda]]'s paternal grandparents and infant father were interned during World War II.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

*The December 2013 ''[[Hawaii 5-0]]'' [[List of Hawaii Five-0 episodes#Season 4 .282013.E2.80.9314.29|Episode 81, "Honor thy father"]], is dedicated to solving a cold case murder at the Honouliuli Internment Camp, some 70 years earlier.<ref name ="Rafu0Hawaii5-0">{{cite news | last = Yamamoto | first = J.K. | title = Five-0 Flashes Back to WWII | url = http://www.rafu.com/2013/12/five-0-flashes-back-to-wwii | publisher = Rafu Shimpo | date = December 11, 2013 | accessdate = March 15, 2015}}</ref>

*The musical ''[[Allegiance (musical)|Allegiance]]'' (2013), which premiered in San Diego, California, was inspired by the camp experiences of [[George Takei]] (who stars).<ref name="Allegiance Musical">{{cite web|title=Allegiance|url=http://www.allegiancemusical.com/about|website=Allegiance Musical|publisher=Allegiance Musical|accessdate=23 February 2015}}</ref>

*The 2014 film, ''[[To Be Takei]]'' chronicles the early life of actor George Takei, who spent several years in an interment camp.<ref>[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/be-takei-sundance-review-672128]</ref>{{cn|reason=replace this citation with npov one|date=April 2015}}

==See also==
{{Portal|Discrimination|World War II|Asian Americans|Japan|United States}}
* [[Day of Remembrance (Japanese Americans)]]
* [[Japanese Canadian internment]]
* [[German American internment]]
* [[Italian American internment]]
* [[German prisoners of war in the United States]]
* [[American propaganda during World War II]]
* [[Arizona during World War II]]
* [[List of documentary films about the Japanese American internment]]
* [[Population transfer]]
* [[Propaganda for Japanese-American internment]]
* [[Korematsu v. United States]]
* ''[[Bad Day at Black Rock]]'' (film about the post-war bias against Japanese Americans)
* ''[[Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo]]'' (1990)

{{-}}

==References and notes==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin}}
*Connell, Thomas. (2002). America's Japanese Hostages: The US Plan For A Japanese Free Hemisphere. [http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Japanese-Hostages-Peruvian-Identities/dp/0275975355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372771369&sr=8-1&keywords=america%27s+japanese+hostages] Westport: [[Praeger-Greenwood]]. ISBN 9780275975357; [http://www.worldcat.org/title/americas-japanese-hostages-the-world-war-ii-plan-for-a-japanese-free-latin-america/oclc/48620417&referer=brief_results OCLC 606835431]

*{{Cite book| title = Command Decisions| editor = Kent Roberts Greenfield| url = http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_0.htm| publisher=[[United States Army Center of Military History]]| year = 2000 (reissue from 1960)| id = CMH Pub 70-7| chapter = 5. The Decision to Evacuate the Japanese from the Pacific Coast| first = Stetson| last = Conn| chapterurl =http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_05.htm }}
*De Nevers, Klancy Clark. ''The Colonel and the Pacifist: Karl Bendetsen, Perry Saito, and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II''. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-87480-789-9
* Drinnon, Richard. ''Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Meyer and American Racism.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
* Gardiner, Clinton Harvey. (1981). [http://books.google.com/books?id=9zp1AAAACAAJ&dq=Pawns+in+a+Triangle+of+Hate&client=firefox-a ''Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States.''] Seattle: [[University of Washington Press]]. 10-ISBN 0-295-95855-3; ISBN 978-0-295-95855-2
*{{Cite book | author=Harth, Erica. | title=Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans | publisher=Palgrave, New York | year=2001 | isbn=0-312-22199-1}}
* Higashide, Seiichi. (2000). [http://books.google.com/books?id=ORE5wfUNdccC&dq=Adios+to+Tears:+The+Memoirs+of+a+Japanese-Peruvian+Internee+in+U.S.+Concentration+Camps&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 ''Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps.''] Seattle: University of Washington Press. 10-ISBN 0-295-97914-3; 13-ISBN 978-0-295-97914-4
* Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo. ''The Politics of Fieldwork: Research in an American Concentration Camp.'' Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1999.
* Gordon, Linda and Gary Y. Okihiro (eds.), ''Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment.'' New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.
* Lyon, Cherstin M. ''Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory.'' Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012.
* Mackey, Mackey, ed. ''Remembering Heart Mountain: Essays on Japanese American Internment in Wyoming.'' Wyoming: Western History Publications, 1998.
* Miyakawa, Edward T. ''Tule Lake.'' Trafford Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-55369-844-4
* Robinson, Greg. ''By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans.'' Cambridge and others: Harvard University Press, 2001.
*{{Cite book | author=Robinson, Greg | title=A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America | publisher=Columbia University Press | year=2009 | isbn=978-0-231-12922-0}}
*{{Cite book | author=Weglyn, Michi. | title=Years Of Infamy: The Untold Story Of America's Concentration Camps | publisher=University of Washington Press | origyear=1976| year=1996 | isbn=0-295-97484-2}}
*{{Cite book | author=Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. | title=Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians | publisher=Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and University of Washington Press | year=1997 | isbn=0-295-97558-X}}
*{{Cite book |title=Japanese-American civilian prisoner exchanges and detention camps, 1941–45 |last=Elleman |first=Bruce |year=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-33188-3 |oclc=  |page=179 |url=http://books.google.com/?id=zTsAj1cfYKUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q= |accessdate=14 September 2009}}
{{refend}}

==External links==

===Archival sources of documents, photos, and other materials===
{{Commons category|Japanese American internment|<br/>Internment of Japanese Americans}}
*[http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/99/fear/gallery.html Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself] – Photo gallery at U.S. Library of Congress.
*[http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/search/collection/social/searchterm/Relocation%20camps/field/all/mode/all/conn/and/cosuppress/ Society and Culture Collection] - at the University of Washington Library consisting of historical images from Washington State
*[http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/japanese-americans/ Japanese American Internment Records] available in the [http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/ Archival Research Catalog] of the [[National Archives and Records Administration]]
*[http://www.densho.org/ Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project], Free digital archive containing hundreds of video oral histories and 10,000 historical photographs and documents
*[http://www.statesmanjournal.com/japanese_internment/intro.html "Beyond Barbed Wire: Japanese Internment through Salem Eyes"], ''Statesman Journal'', videos, stories, photographs and documents.
*[http://jarda.cdlib.org/ "Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives"], University of California, contains personal & official photographs, letters, diaries, transcribed oral histories, etc.
*[http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/documents.html Large number of documents] – Official documents, including official court opinions on the Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu Supreme Court cases
*[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aamhtml/aamhome.html Ansel Adams, "Photographs of Japanese American Internment at Manzanar"], ''American Memory Collection'', Library of Congress
*[http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/japanese_internment/index.html "Letters from the Japanese American Internment"], Correspondence between librarian Clara Breed and young internees, Smithsonian Institution
*[http://www.texasarchive.org/library/index.php?title=Alien_Enemy_Detention_Facility%2C_Crystal_City%2C_Texas&gsearch=alien%20enemy "Alien Enemy Detention Facility, Crystal City, Texas"], film produced by the INS about Crystal City Alien Enemy Detention Facility, c. 1943
*[http://www.japaneserelocation.org/ JapaneseRelocation.org] – World War II Japanese Relocation Camp Internee Records index
*[http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf596nb4h0/?query=Japanese%2520American%2520 Evacuation War Relocation Authority Photographs of Japanese-American Evacuation and Resettlement, 1942-1945], [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt638nc9ww/?query=Japanese%2520American%2520Evacuation Japanese American Relocation Collection], and [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf5j49n8kh/?query=Japanese%2520American%2520Evacuation Inventory of the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records, 1930-1974 (bulk 1942-1946)] at [[The Bancroft Library]]

===Other sources===
*{{Handbook of Texas|id=WW/quwby|name=World War II Internment Camps}}{{dead link|date=November 2014}}
*[http://www.campaignforjusticejla.org/ "Campaign For Justice: Redress Now For Japanese American Internees!". A website with information about the lesser known internment of Japanese Latin Americans]{{dead link|date=November 2014}}
*[http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibition.cfm?key=38&exkey=78 A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution] Online exhibition from the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution{{dead link|date=November 2014}}
*[http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74/index.htm National Park Service; Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites.]{{dead link|date=November 2014}}
*[http://www.minidoka.org/ Friends of Minidoka]
*[http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/fred_korematsu_racial_profiling.html 60 years after his landmark Supreme Court battle, Fred Korematsu is fighting racial profiling of Arabs]
*[http://www.colostate.edu/Orgs/TuleLake/Tule%20Lake%20Menu.html Tule Lake Relocation Center by I. Fujimoto and D. Sunada]
* {{Internet Archive short film|id=gov.fdr.144|name="Japanese Relocation with Milton Eisenhower"}}
* {{Internet Archive short film|id=gov.fdr.21|name="Challenge to Democracy (Japanese Internment) (1942)"}}
* {{Internet Archive short film|id=gov.archives.arc.39227|name="Barriers And Passes, ca. 1939 – ca. 1945"}}
* [http://zinnedproject.org/materials/a-lesson-on-the-japanese-american-internment/ Mark Sweeting, “A Lesson on the Japanese American Internment”], 4-page lesson plan for high school students, 2004, Zinn Education Project/Rethinking Schools

{{Japanese American internment camps}}
{{NARA}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese American Internment}}
[[Category:Japanese American internment| ]]
[[Category:Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States|Internment]]
[[Category:Internments in the United States]]
[[Category:Japanese-American history|Internment]]
[[Category:Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt]]
[[Category:Racism in the United States]]
[[Category:World War II sites in the United States]]
[[Category:Articles containing video clips]]