1942: WAR ON TERROR

Today marks the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which set about events that placed 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, including American Citizens, into "relocation camps". Included were my grandparents, uncle and bun-in-the-oven father, as well as other relatives. Some of my relatives were in the camps, while their husbands & fathers were in the U.S. Military fighting in WWII defending the very freedoms that were being taken away back home. Let us never forget and teach new generations of this terrible time in US History, to avoid similar acts happening in the Future.Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on Feb 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted the military to circumvent the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense.

The order set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.

These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

They were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family members were separated and put into different camps. President Roosevelt himself called the 10 facilities "concentration camps."

Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders.

At the time, Executive Order 9066 was justified as a "military necessity" to protect against domestic espionage and sabotage. However, it was later documented that "our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage." (Michi Weglyn, 1976).

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