Japanese American Incarceration Timeline

1853-54 U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry sailed gunships into Tokyo Bay and
demanded Japan’s government end its centuries-old isolationist foreign
policy, throwing Japan into political, and later, economic turmoil.
1880s Laws excluding Chinese immigrants from the U.S. were enacted, causing a
labor shortage in Western states. Railroad companies recruited Japanese
laborers, and a wave of Japanese immigration to the U.S. began.
1898 The U.S. annexed Hawaii, which had a large Japanese population.
1906 San Francisco passed a resolution that required all Japanese and Korean
students to join Chinese students at a segregated school.
1907 The U.S. agreed not to restrict Japanese immigration, and Japan agreed
to stop further emigration to the U.S. through the Gentlemen’s Agreement.
1913 California passed the Alien Land Law, forbidding "all aliens ineligible for
citizenship" from owning land. Though the law affected all Asian
immigrants, it was mostly directed at Japanese.
1924 Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, effectively ending
Japanese immigration to the U.S.
11/7/1941 Munson Report released (Document B).
12/7/1941 Japan bombed the U.S. Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii.
2/19/1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing military
authorities to exclude civilians from any area without trial or hearing.
12/18/1944 The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 in
Korematsu v. United States (Document D).
3/20/1946 The last War Relocation Authority facility, the Tule Lake Segregation
Center, closed.
Late 1960s The Asian American Movement began.
Late 1970s Japanese American activists started the Redress Movement to get
compensation and an apology from the U.S. government for the mass
removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
1980 The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was
established. In 1983 it issued its report, Personal Justice Denied
(Document E).
8/10/1988 President Ronald Reagan signed HR 442 into law. It acknowledged that
the incarceration of more than 110,000 individuals of Japanese descent
was unjust and offered an apology and reparation payments of $20,000 to
each person incarcerated.

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 Document B: The Munson Report

In 1941 President Roosevelt ordered the State Department to investigate

the loyalty of Japanese Americans. Special Representative of the State
Department Curtis B. Munson carried out the investigation in October and
November of 1941. The product of this investigation became known as the
“Munson Report,” and it was presented to President Roosevelt on
November 7, 1941. The excerpt below is from the 25-page report.

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 entree to plants or intricate machinery.

Source: The Munson Report, delivered to President Roosevelt by Special

Representative of the State Department Curtis B. Munson, November 7,
1941.

Vocabulary

saboteurs: a person who deliberately destroys something to gain a military

advantage
Bridges type: a reference to Harry Bridges, a leader of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union
entree: access
intricate: complicated

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 Document C: The Crisis

The following excerpt is from an editorial published in The Crisis shortly

after the establishment of incarceration camps for Japanese Americans.
Founded in 1910, The Crisis is the official magazine of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an
organization dedicated to promoting civil rights.

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.

Source: Harry Paxton Howard, “Americans in Concentration Camps,” The

Crisis, September 1942.

Vocabulary

high-handed: using authority without considering the feelings of others

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 Document D: The Korematsu Supreme Court Ruling

In 1944, Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American convicted of evading

incarceration, brought his case to the Supreme Court. In a controversial
ruling, the Court decided that national security outweighed Korematsu’s
individual rights and upheld the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066.
The excerpt below is from the Court’s majority opinion written by Chief
Justice Hugo Black.

We uphold the exclusion order. . . . In doing so, we are not unmindful of the
hardships imposed by it upon a large group of American citizens. . . . But
hardships are part of war, and war is an aggregation of 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 exclusion of
large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of
direct emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental
institutions. But when, under conditions of modern warfare, our shores are
threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate
with the threatened danger. . . .

To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the
real military dangers which were presented, merely confuses the issue.
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 the . . . military authorities feared an invasion of our West
Coast and . . . because they decided that the military urgency of the
situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated
from the West Coast temporarily, and, finally, because Congress . . .
determined that our military leaders should have the power to do just this.

Source: Chief Justice Hugo Black, Korematsu v. United States, 1944.

Vocabulary

aggregation: sum
compulsory: mandatory
commensurate: in proportion

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 Document E: Personal Justice Denied
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
below is an excerpt from this report.

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 that followed from it—exclusion, detention, the ending of
detention and the ending of exclusion—were not founded upon military
conditions. The broad historical causes that shaped these decisions were
race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.
Widespread ignorance about Americans of Japanese descent contributed
to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and
anger at Japan. A grave personal injustice was done to the American
citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry who, without individual
review or any probative evidence against them, were excluded, removed
and detained by the United States during World War II.

Source: Personal Justice Denied: The Report of the Commission on

Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, February 24, 1983.

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 Name__________________

Why were Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII?

Round One
Document Reasons for incarceration suggested Evidence from document to support
by this document these reasons

Government
Newsreel

Date: _________

Hypothesis 1: Why were Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II?

Round Two
Document Reasons for incarceration suggested Evidence from document to support
by this document these reasons

The Munson Report

Date: _________

The Crisis article

Date: _________

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 Hypothesis 2: Why were Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II?

Why were Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII?

Round Three
Document Reasons for incarceration suggested Evidence from document to support
by this document these reasons

Korematsu v. United
States

Date: _________

Personal Justice
Denied

Date: _________

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Final Hypothesis: Why were Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II?

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