Japanese Internment Documents

Japanese Internment Timeline

1891 - Japanese immigrants arrive on the mainland U.S. for work primarily as agricultural laborers.

1906 - The San Francisco Board of Education passes a resolution to segregate children of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ancestry.

1913 - California passes the Alien Land Law, forbidding "all aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning land.

1924 - Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1924 effectively ending all Japanese immigration to the U.S.

November 1941 - Munson Report released (Document B).

December 7, 1941 - Japan bombs U.S. ships and planes at the Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii.

February 19, 1942 - President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 authorizing military authorities to exclude civilians from any area without trial or hearing.

January 1943 - The War Department announces the formation of a segregated unit of Japanese American soldiers.

January 1944 - The War Department imposes the draft on Japanese American men, including those incarcerated in the camps.

December 1944 - The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 in Korematsu v. United States (Document D).

March 20, 1946 - Tule Lake "Segregation Center" closes. This is the last War Relocation Authority facility to close.

August 10, 1988 - President Ronald Reagan signs HR 442 into law. It acknowledges that the incarceration of more than 110,000 individuals of Japanese descent was unjust, and offers an apology and reparation payments of $20,000 to each person incarcerated.

Source: Stanford History Education Group

Document A: The Munson Report (Modified)

            What will these people do in the case of a war between America and Japan?...There is no Japanese `problem' on the Coast. There will be no armed uprising of Japanese. There will undoubtedly be some sabotage financed by Japan and executed largely by imported agents...In each Naval District there are about 250 to 300 suspects under surveillance. It is easy to get on the suspect list, merely a speech in favor of Japan at some banquet being sufficient to land one there. The Intelligence Services are generous with the title of suspect and are taking no chances. Privately, they believe that only 50 or 60 in each district can be classed as really dangerous. The Japanese are hampered as saboteurs because of their easily recognized physical appearance. It will be hard for them to get near anything to blow up if it is guarded. There is far more danger from Communists and people of the Bridges type on the Coast than there is from Japanese. The Japanese here is almost exclusively a farmer, a fisherman or a small businessman. He has no entrée to plants or intricate machinery.

 

Context: In 1941 President Roosevelt ordered the State Department to investigate the loyalty of Japanese Americans in the west coast. Special Representative of the State Department Curtis B. Munson carried out the investigation in October and November of 1941 and presented what came to be known as the “Munson Report” to the President on November 7, 1941.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the report was never made public.

Source: The Munson Report, delivered to President Roosevelt by Special Representative of the State Department Curtis B. Munson, November 7, 1941. Curtis Munson was a wealth American businessman.  Munson did not have formal training in investigation but had impressed FDR in a previous investigation he had conducted in Martinique (French Island Colony).

Document B: The Crisis

Along the eastern coast of the United States, where the numbers of Americans of Japanese ancestry is comparatively small, no concentration camps have been established. From a military point of view, the only danger on this coast is from Germany and Italy.

But the American government has not taken any such high-handed action against Germans and Italians – and their American-born descendants – on the East Coast, as has been taken against Japanese and their American-born descendants on the West Coast. Germans and Italians are “white.” Color seems to be the only possible reason why thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry are in concentration camps. Anyway, there are no Italian-American, or German-American citizens in such camps.

 

Context: The Crisis is one of the oldest black periodicals in America and is dedicated to promoting civil rights. Founded in 1910 by W.E.B it is the official magazine of the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The excerpt is from an editorial that appeared soon after the establishment of internment camps.

Source: Harry Paxton Howard, “Americans in Concentration Camps,” The Crisis, September 1942.

Document C: The Korematsu Supreme Court Ruling

We uphold the exclusion order…We know this order poses hardships to the Japanese-Americans. But hardships are part of war, and war is…hardships. All citizens alike, both in and out of uniform, feel the impact of war in greater or lesser measure. Citizenship has its responsibilities, as well as its privileges, and, in time of war, the burden is always heavier. Compulsory [required] exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst [most terrible] emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when, under conditions of modern warfare, our shores are threatened by hostile forces, we must be allowed to protect ourselves.

            Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire…because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily…

Context: In 1944, Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American convicted of evading internment, brought his case to the Supreme Court. In a controversial 6 to 3 ruling, the Court decided that national security outweighed Korematsu’s individual rights and upheld the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066.

Source: Excerpt from the Supreme Court’s majority opinion written by Chief Justice Hugo Black for Korematsu v. United States.

Document D: “Personal Justice Denied” (Modified)

The Commission held 20 days of hearings in cities across the country, particularly on the West Coast, hearing testimony from more than 750 witnesses: evacuees, former government officials, public figures, interested citizens, and historians and other professionals who have studied the subjects of Commission inquiry. An extensive effort was made to locate and to review the records of government action and to analyze other sources of information including contemporary writings, personal accounts and historical analyses.

Executive Order 9066 was not justified by military necessity, and the decisions which followed from it—detention, ending detention and ending exclusion—were not driven by analysis of military conditions. The broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership. Widespread ignorance of Japanese Americans contributed to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and anger at Japan. A grave injustice was done to American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry who, without individual review or any

… evidence against them, were excluded, removed and detained by the United States during World War II.

Source: In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate the detention program and the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066. The Commission released its report “ Personal Justice Denied: The Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians” on February 24, 1983. The passage above is an excerpt from this report.