JAPANESE AMERICAN EVACUATION CASES
In the midst of WORLD WAR II (WWII), from 1942 to 1944, the U.S. Army evacuated Japanese Americans living on the West Coast from their homes and transferred them to makeshift detention camps. The army insisted that it was a “military necessity” to evacuate both citizens and noncitizens of Japanese ancestry, and its actions
were supported by President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT and the U.S. Congress. Those who were evacuated suffered tremendous losses, being forced to sell their homes and belongings on
very short notice and to live in crowded and
unsanitary conditions. A few Japanese Ameri-
cans challenged the constitutionality of the
evacuation orders, but the Supreme Court at
first ruled against them. In the years since the
end ofWWII, the U.S. government has acknowl-
edged the injustice suffered by the Japanese
American evacuees, and it has made several
efforts to redress their losses.
History
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Decem-
ber 7, 1941, persons of Japanese descent living in
the western United States became a target for
widespread suspicion, fear, and hostility. Several
forces contributed to this sense of anger and
paranoia. First, the devastating success of the
Pearl Harbor attack led many to question how
the U.S. military could have been caught so
unprepared. A report commissioned by Presi-
dent Roosevelt directly blamed the U.S. Army
and Navy commanders in Hawaii for their lack
of preparedness, but it also claimed that a Japan-
ese ESPIONAGE network in Hawaii had sent
“information to the Japanese Empire respecting
the military and naval establishments” on the
island. This espionage ring, the report asserted,
included both Japanese consular officials and
“persons having no open relations with the
Japanese foreign service” (88 Cong. Rec. pt.8,at
A261). This accusation against Japanese Hawai-
ians, though never proved, inflamed the main-
land press and contributed to what quickly
became an intense campaign to evacuate Japan-
ese Americans from the West Coast.
A second cause for the hostility directed at
Japanese Americans was the widespread belief
after Pearl Harbor that Japan would soon try to
invade the West Coast of the United States.
Much of the Pacific fleet had been destroyed by
the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Japanese had
gone on to achieve a series of military victories
in the Pacific. A West Coast invasion seemed
imminent to many, and statements by govern-
ment officials and newspaper editors stoked
fears about the loyalty of Japanese Americans
and their possible involvement in espionage
activities. On January 28, 1942, for example, an
editorial in the Los Angeles Times argued that
“the rigors of war demand proper detention of
Japanese and their immediate removal from the
most acute danger spots” on the West Coast.
Syndicated columnist Henry McLemore was less
1
J(cont.)restrained in his assessment, which appeared in
the San Francisco Examiner on January 29: “I am
for immediate removal of every Japanese . . . to a
point deep in the interior. I don’t mean a nice
part of the interior either . . . Let ’em be pinched,
hurt, hungry and dead up against it. . . . Person-
ally I hate the Japanese.”
On February 14, 1942, Lieutenant General
John L. De Witt, commanding general of the
Western Defense Command, issued a final rec-
ommendation to the secretary of war arguing
that it was a military necessity to evacuate
“Japanese and other subversive persons from
the Pacific Coast.” The recommendation con-
tained a brief analysis of the situation, which
read, in part:
In the war which we are now engaged, racial
affinities are not severed by migration. The
Japanese race is an enemy race and while
many second and third generation Japanese
born on United States soil, possessed of
United States citizenship, have become
“Americanized,” the racial strains are undi-
luted. . . . It, therefore, follows that along the
vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential
enemies of Japanese extraction are at large
today. There are indications that the very fact
that no sabotage has taken place to date is a
disturbing and confirming indication that
such action will be taken (War Department
1942, 34).
Many other leading politicians and govern-
ment officials shared De Witt’s views. The Cali-
fornia congressional delegation, for example,
wrote to President Roosevelt urging the removal
of the entire Japanese population from the
coastal states. California state attorney general
EARL WARREN, who would later become gover-
nor of California and chief justice of the
Supreme Court, strongly advocated the evacua-
tion of the Japanese, arguing before a congres-
sional committee that to believe that the lack of
sabotage activity among Japanese Americans
proved their loyalty was foolish.
De Witt’s report, combined with pressure
from other military leaders and political groups,
led President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, to
sign EXECUTIVE ORDER No. 9066, which gave
the War Department the authority to designate
military zones “from which any or all persons
may be excluded.” Despite warnings from the
U.S. attorney general, FRANCIS BIDDLE, that the
forced removal of U.S. citizens was unconstitu-
tional, Roosevelt signed 9066 with the clear
intent of removing both citizens and noncitizens
of Japanese descent. The order theoretically also
affected German and Italian nationals, who
greatly outnumbered Japanese people living in
the designated areas. However, Germans and
Italians who were considered suspect were given
individual hearings and were interned. The
Japanese, on the other hand, were treated not as
individuals but as the “enemy race” that De Witt
had labeled them in his evacuation recommen-
dation. Congress hurriedly sanctioned the pres-
ident’s order when, with little debate and a
unanimous voice vote, it passed Public Law No.
503, which incorporated the procedures of 9066,
criminalizing the violations of military orders,
such as the curfews and evacuation directives
outlined in the order.
The signing of 9066 and its passage into law
immediately set in motion the steps leading to
the removal of Japanese Americans on the West
Coast from their homes and communities. On
February 25 General De Witt ordered the evic-
tion of the two thousand Japanese living on Ter-
minal Island, in Los Angeles, giving them 24
hours to sell their homes and businesses. On
March 2 De Witt issued Military Proclamation
No. 1, which declared the western half of Cali-
fornia, Oregon, and Washington to be military
zones with specific zones of exclusion. This
order allowed Japanese living there to “voluntar-
ily evacuate” the area. Because the Japanese
knew they were not welcome in other parts of
the country and because those who had tried to
resettle had frequently been the targets of vio-
lence, the majority remained where they were.
On March 24 De Witt issued Military Order
No. 3, which established a nighttime curfew and
a five-mile travel restriction to be imposed only
on persons of Japanese ancestry. On the same
day, the first civilian exclusion order was issued
on Bainbridge Island, in Washington, ordering
the Japanese Americans there to leave the island
within 24 hours. The Japanese began to sense
that they would all soon be evicted from the
entire West Coast, but because they were subject
to the five-mile travel restriction, they were
unable to leave the military zones and attempt to
resettle elsewhere.
By early April 1942, orders began to be
posted in Japanese communities directing all
persons of Japanese ancestry, both citizens and
resident ALIENS, to report to assembly points.
With only a matter of days to prepare for
removal, the Japanese were forced to sell their
homes, cars, and other possessions, at tremendous losses, to neighbors and others who were
eager to take advantage of the situation.
By the beginning of June 1942, all Japanese
Americans living in California, Oregon, and
Washington had been evacuated and trans-
ported by train or bus to detention camps,
which were officially labeled assembly centers.
Over 112,000 Japanese Americans were evacu-
ated and detained, approximately 70,000 of
them U.S. citizens. Because the detention camps
had been hastily arranged, they were largely
made up of crude shacks and converted live-
stock stables located in hot and dry desert areas.
Privacy was nonexistent; families were separated
by only thin partitions, and toilets had no parti-
tions at all. These bleak, crowded, and unsani-
tary conditions, combined with inadequate
food, led to widespread sickness and a disinte-
gration of family order and unity.
Internees were forced to remain in the
detention camps until December 1944, when the
War Department finally announced the revoca-
tion of the exclusion policy and declared that the
camps would be closed. This was two-and-a-half
years after the June 2, 1942, Battle of Midway,
which had left the Japanese naval fleet virtually
destroyed, leading U.S. Naval Intelligence to
send reports to Washington dismissing any fur-
ther threat of a West Coast invasion.
Supreme Court Challenges
Though the majority of the Japanese Ameri-
cans on the West Coast obeyed the harsh cur-
fews, evacuations, and detentions imposed on
them in a surprisingly quiet and orderly fashion,
over one hundred individuals attempted to chal-
lenge the government’s orders. Most of these
people were convicted in court and lacked the
financial resources to appeal. But a few cases
reached the Supreme Court, including Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115, 63 S. Ct. 1392, 87 L. Ed. 1793 (1943), Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 63 S. Ct. 1375, 87 L. Ed. 1774 (1943), and KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944).
Minoru Yasui, an attorney from Portland,
Oregon, raised the first legal test of De Witt’s
curfew orders. A well-educated and very patri-
otic U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry, Yasui did
not object to the general principle of the curfew
order or to a curfew applied only to aliens. His
objection was that De Witt’s orders applied to all
persons of Japanese ancestry, both citizens and
noncitizens alike. “That order,” Yasui declared,
“infringed on my rights as a citizen” (Irons 1983,
84). Determined to become a TEST CASE for the
constitutionality of De Witt’s curfews, Yasui
walked into a Portland police station on the
evening of March 28, 1942, hours after the cur-
few was first imposed and demanded to be
arrested for curfew violation.
Yasui was arrested. His case went to trial in
June 1942, where he argued that Executive
Order No. 9066 was unconstitutional. The judge
in the case, James Alger Fee, did not return a ver-
dict until November, when he found Yasui
guilty. Fee asserted that Yasui’s previous employ-
ment as a Japanese consular agent had consti-
tuted a FORFEITURE of his U.S. citizenship, and
thus he was subject to the curfew order as an
enemy alien (Yasui, 48 F. Supp. 40 [D.Or. 1942]).
Fee sentenced Yasui to the maximum penalty,
one year in prison and a fine of $5,000. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld his conviction for curfew violation, though it found that Fee had been incorrect in holding that Yasui had forfeited his U.S. citizenship.
The second test case involved Gordon Kiyoshi
Hirabayashi, a 24-year-old student at the Univer-
sity of Washington. A committed Christian and a
pacifist,Hirabayashi also decided to make himself
a test case for the constitutionality of De Witt’s
orders, particularly the evacuation order sched-
uled to take effect on May 16, 1942. He therefore
chose to break the curfew three times between
May 4 and May 10, and recorded these instances
in his diary. On May 16 Hirabayashi went to the
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION office in
Seattle, accompanied by his lawyer, and told a
special agent there that he had no choice but to
reject the evacuation order.
Hirabayashi was convicted of intentionally
