Have you ever
heard of “Executive Order 9066”? Well, if you happen to be of Japanese descent
you probably know all about it. Here is what happened:
On this day
in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, initiating
a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese
Americans. The document ordered the removal of resident enemy aliens from parts
of the West vaguely identified as military areas.
After the
bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941, Roosevelt came under
increasing pressure by military and political advisors to address the nation's
fears of further Japanese attack or sabotage, particularly on the West Coast,
where naval ports, commercial shipping and agriculture were most vulnerable.
Included in the off-limits military areas referred to in the order were
ill-defined areas around West Coast cities, ports and industrial and
agricultural regions. While 9066 also affected Italian and German Americans,
the largest numbers of detainees were by far Japanese.
On the West
Coast, long-standing racism against Japanese Americans, motivated in part by
jealousy over their commercial success, erupted after Pearl Harbor into furious
demands to remove them en masse to relocation camps for the duration of the
war. Japanese immigrants and their descendants, regardless of American
citizenship status or length of residence, were systematically rounded up and
placed in detention centers. Evacuees, as they were sometimes called, could
take only as many possessions as they could carry and were housed in crude,
cramped quarters. In the western states, camps on remote and barren sites such
as Manzanar and Tule Lake housed thousands of families whose lives were
interrupted and in some cases destroyed by Executive Order 9066. Many lost
businesses, farms and loved ones as a result.
Roosevelt
delegated enforcement of 9066 to the War Department, telling Secretary of War
Henry Stimson to be as reasonable as possible in executing the order. Attorney
General Francis Biddle recalled Roosevelt's grim determination to do whatever
he thought was necessary to win the war. Biddle observed that Roosevelt was
[not] much concerned with the gravity or implications of issuing an order that
essentially contradicted the Bill of Rights. In her memoirs, Eleanor Roosevelt
recalled being completely floored by her husband's action. A fierce proponent
of civil rights, Eleanor hoped to change Roosevelt's mind, but when she brought
the subject up with him, he interrupted her and told her never to mention it
again.
During the
war, the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases challenging the constitutionality
of Executive Order 9066, upholding it both times. Finally, on February 19,
1976, decades after the war, Gerald Ford signed an order prohibiting the
executive branch from reinstituting the notorious and tragic World War II
order. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan issued a public apology on behalf of
the government and authorized reparations for former Japanese internees or
their descendants.
Today's Reflection:
-If you keep saying things are going to be bad long enough -you have a chance of becoming a prophet...
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