About 127,000 Japanese Americans then lived in the continental U.S., of which about 112,000 lived on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei (‘second generation’; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei (‘third generation’, the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei (‘first generation’) immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship.
Internment was intended to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose. The scale of the incarceration in proportion to the size of the Japanese American population far surpassed similar measures undertaken against German and Italian Americans who numbered in the millions and of whom some thousands were interned, most of these non-citizens. Following the executive order, the entire West Coast was designated as a military exclusion area, and all Japanese Americans who were living there were taken to assembly centers before they were sent to concentration camps in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas. Similar actions were taken against individuals of Japanese descent in Canada. The internees were prohibited from taking more than they could carry into the camps, and many of them were forced to sell either some or all of their property, including their homes and their businesses. Inside the camps, which were surrounded by barbed wire fences and were patrolled by armed guards, the internees frequently lived in overcrowded barracks which contained minimal furnishings.
On December 17, 1944, the exclusion orders were rescinded, and nine of the ten camps were shut down by the end of 1945. Japanese Americans were initially barred from U.S. military service, but by 1943, they were allowed to join, with 20,000 serving during the war. Over 4,000 students were allowed to leave the camps to attend college. Hospitals in the camps recorded 5,981 births and 1,862 deaths during incarceration.
By 1992, the U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to $4.36 billion in 2025) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated.
A dark moment of our history often passed over, and only recently begun to be more widely taught.
I typed up something half wise, but realized halfway through that am too beholden to Dionysus tonight to be clever or coherent. So I’ll just say that this is one of those parts of American history that makes me disbelieve in the lovely dream of all men and women being equal, leaving our former blood allegiances behind for something sweeter.
Luckily, I grew up in a time (and state - deep blue) where it was taught, but even then I was acutely aware that it was a very recent change in the curriculum. In many places in the US I’m sure it’s still not on the curriculum - or quietly skipped or skimmed over.
I grew up in the deep dark pines of Texas, but I had a good civics teacher. She taught us about this, and how Japan was trying to surrender before Nagazaki, and about Eugene Debs, and about the ERA.
Sadly that school district got rid of Civics, Home Ec, Metal Shop, Auto Shop and Programming Class during no child left behind… Explains how we’re getting the politicians we get so easily now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
A dark moment of our history often passed over, and only recently begun to be more widely taught.
I typed up something half wise, but realized halfway through that am too beholden to Dionysus tonight to be clever or coherent. So I’ll just say that this is one of those parts of American history that makes me disbelieve in the lovely dream of all men and women being equal, leaving our former blood allegiances behind for something sweeter.
I was going to mention that this shit was never taught to us on school. Despicable.
Luckily, I grew up in a time (and state - deep blue) where it was taught, but even then I was acutely aware that it was a very recent change in the curriculum. In many places in the US I’m sure it’s still not on the curriculum - or quietly skipped or skimmed over.
I grew up in the deep dark pines of Texas, but I had a good civics teacher. She taught us about this, and how Japan was trying to surrender before Nagazaki, and about Eugene Debs, and about the ERA.
Sadly that school district got rid of Civics, Home Ec, Metal Shop, Auto Shop and Programming Class during no child left behind… Explains how we’re getting the politicians we get so easily now.
I grew up in Texas, and this was absolutely part of our US history curriculum (~1998)