This blog piece was written by one of our students, Leanna Haynes. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
Executive Order 9066 – the executive order that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) issued on February 19, 1942, which “authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to ‘relocation centers’ further inland—resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans.” (National Archives, January 24, 2022.) These “relocation centers” quickly became known by their correct names: internment camps. Over 122,000 Japanese Americans, over 60% of which were American citizens, were placed in these camps to live for almost four years. Because of how fast this order was issued after the bombing and the follow-up Public Proclamation No. 4 (March 29, 1942) issued by Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command, Japanese American home and business owners had to sell their properties and businesses for pennies on the dollar, sometimes for nothing, and this resulted in over $2.7 billion in losses plus loss of all their personal liberties. In wake of the upcoming 2024 election and Project 2025, let us revisit Executive Order 9066 and see how history can easily repeat itself.
Who were Japanese Americans in 1942? They were men, women, children, parents, husbands, wives, siblings, relatives, friends, and community. They were productive members of society who brought their skills from working in the Hawaiian fields to the west coast of mainland USA and cultivated farmlands. They were enterprising business owners. They were good workers. They were people building lives for themselves and their families. They were peaceful people. They were American citizens.
So, why did they become a target? After Japan attacked the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii, lobbyists feared that the Japanese Americans in the US were ‘alien’ enemies, traitors, and potential spies for the Japanese government. There was no proof of this being true and no plots uncovered to support it. This was simply a fear that caused lobbyists to insist that the President and Congress make and enforce this order. It’s worth noting that Francis Biddle, the 58th US Attorney General, who was serving in office at the time, opposed Executive Order 9066, along with some of FDR’s other advisors. However, their opposition to the order was not enough to stop its implementation.
Because most of the Asian communities were on the west coast, the entire west coast was declared a military zone. They started calling the Japanese Americans ‘Japs’ which was a derogatory term with the stigma similar to that of African Americans being called the N-Word. The Japanese Americans were then confined to barb-wired internment camps for up to four years in ten areas within Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Inside these camps they were treated like prisoners, left to sleep in horse stables, not fed sufficiently, and forced to live in unsanitary conditions. As if the poor living conditions were not enough, while in internment camps, they were put into circumstances where those with American citizenship had hardly any other choice than to give it up, forcefully and without due process. The government used a loyalty questionnaire with two very problematic questions: #27 and #28. “27. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?“
“28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?”
Those who answered “no”and “no” to these questions were forced to move away from what had become their “homes” to the biggest internment camp with the highest security of all of them: Tule Lake in California. Once there, they were put on trial and had to go through a long legal process for many years in order to regain their citizenship. A lawyer by the name of Wayne Collins made it his call of duty to help as many Japanese Americans as he could to regain their citizenship on the basis that their 5th amendment was violated: “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” He fought Executive Order 9066 all the way to the Supreme Court. Some Japanese Americans regained their citizenship and were not deported. Some were not as fortunate. Therefore, many had to go to Japan, a country which they did not know but had no choice other than to familiarize themselves with it.
After many, many years, the American government apologized to the Japanese Americans. On February 19, 1976, (its 34th anniversary) President Gerald Ford signed a document saying that Executive Order 9066 was officially terminated. He said, “We now know what we should have known then — not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans.” This formal and legal confession, along with $20,000 to each person who was incarcerated, was what was given as an apology.
The Executive Order 9066 was brutal, inhumane, and unconstitutional. It cost tens of thousands of Americans their livelihoods, their families, and their feeling of belonging. It was cruel and unforgivable to put them there, let them build communities, and then uproot them because of their answers on a test. It was evil and unacceptable to take them from their original homes in the first place. The compensation was a good thing to do, but what the American government did to people of Japanese descent will never be forgotten. The apology is still appreciated today. It was a start to the healing process, but it can never make up for the damage that the order caused.
Now here we are with the 2024 Presidential election in just over 100 days. The effects of one of the parties’ agenda looks heavily like the effects of Executive Order 9066, but with even more events. Have we, as a nation, learned from our mistakes? In 2018 we saw the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Hawaii where in her dissent Justice Sotomayer says that this decision “redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one gravely wrong decision with another.” Again, I ask have we, as a nation, learned from our mistakes? Will history repeat itself with Project 2025?
