An Unfair Relocation

When World War II came about, it brought tragic results for the Japanese-Americans. At the time, there were approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans living in the US, mostly concentrated on the West Coast. The attack on Pearl Harbor stunned the US, and the Americans believed that the Japanese would strike again. Shortly thereafter, rumors of sabotage surfaced concerning the Japanese and how they were supposedly poisoning vegetables. Feelings of prejudice swept the nation until, in 1942, the War Department called for the evacuation of all the Japanese-Americans. The internment, or confinement, of 110 thousand Japanese-Americans soon followed and they were shipped to 10 hastily-made relocation centers in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. 1,444 Hawiian Japanese were sent to camps, approximately 1% of the Japanese population in Hawaii. Two thirds of the people that had been relocated were Nisei, or people who were born in the United States but their parents had immigrated from Japan. Thousands of Nisei were already in the army.

The Japanese-Americans were relocated even though there were no charges against them, no evidence of wrong-doing, and people were forced to sell their homes, businesses, and belongings for less than they were worth. In the 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the relocation was justified. "Military necessity" was the reasoning behind the declaration. After the war ended, the Japanese-American Citizens League (JACL) pushed the government to compensate for lost property. In 1965, Congress gave $38 million to Japanese who had been interned. However, that was less than 10 percent of the actual loss that they suffered. The JACL didn't give up. In 1978, they called for reparations for each individual who was affected by the relocation. It wouldn't be until a decade later that President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that granted 20 thousand dollars to each Japanese-American who was sent to an internment camp. These checks were sent out in 1990 along with a letter of apology from President George Bush. The United States had finally recognized their wrongdoings and had apologized for them.

By Becky and Liane