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Japanese Internment

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Japanese Internment refers to the incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps as a result of Executive Order 9066 issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The executive order divided the West Coast into military zones and authorized the forced removal of any person deemed to pose a military threat. About 120,000 Japanese Americans from these areas were held in concentration camps from 1942-1945. Several challenges to these government actions reached the Supreme Court. While the Court upheld the exclusions as a wartime necessity, it also ruled that the government could not incarcerate loyal citizens without cause. In the decades following the war, the federal government acknowledged Japanese-American internment as a "setback to fundamental American principles" and provided redress to surviving victims of exclusion and incarceration.

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  • Legalizing Whiteness: What Asian American Legal History Tells Us About Citizenship in the Early 20th Century (2025)
    This teaching module explains how the Supreme Court determined Asian American legal standings in the early 20th century through the lens of and priority toward whiteness.
  • Executive Order 9066 - Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas (1942)
    This executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a federal law that forcefully removed persons deemed a national security threat to "relocation centers" in the western United States. While the order did not include racialized language, it was created with the intent to target Japanese Americans. About 120,000 Japanese Americans were held in these concentration camps from 1942-1945.
  • Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 (1942)
    This broadside detailed U.S. Army orders to force all persons of Japanese ancestry, whether citizens or non-citizens, to depart Alameda County, California, and report to an assembly center where they would be sent to concentration camps. Fred Korematsu defied this exclusion order by remaining at his residence and was eventually convicted in federal court.
  • Loyalty (1943)
    This poem was published in a book commemorating the first year of the Tule Lake Relocation Center, a concentration camp operated in California by the U.S. government to incarcerate Japanese Americans who had been forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast. While the author of the poem, Sada Murayama, was herself an Issei immigrant (first generation of Japanese immigrant) and thus ineligible for citizenship, two thirds of the people incarcerated in these camps were U.S. citizens. The speaker of the poem is one of these Japanese American citizens, grappling with what it means to be loyal to a country that is not loyal to all of its citizens.
  • Hirabayashi v. United States (1943)
    In this case, the Supreme Court held that curfews against minority groups were constitutional at a time of war against the country that group's ancestors originated from. After Executive Order 9066 was issued in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were subject to curfews and other restrictions in addition to being removed to concentration camps. Gordon Hirabayashi was convicted of violating curfew. This was a companion case to Yasui v. United States, decided on the same day.
  • Yasui v. United States (1943)
    In this case, the Supreme Court held that curfews against minority groups were constitutional at a time of war against the country that group's ancestors originated from. After Executive Order 9066 was issued in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were subject to curfews and other restrictions in addition to being removed to concentration camps. Minoru Yasui was convicted of violating curfew. This was a companion case to Hirabayashi v. United States, decided on the same day.
  • Korematsu v. United States (1944)
    In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that war-time exclusion against Japanese-Americans was valid. Fred Korematsu, an American citizen of Japanese decent, was arrested and convicted of defying the exclusion order that forced all persons of Japanese ancestry to report for removal, pursuant to an exclusion order under the authority of Executive Order 9066. His appeals eventually reached the Supreme Court. Korematsu argued that the executive order violated his right to due process under the Fifth Amendment. The Court, however, ruled that the exclusion orders fell within the war powers of Congress and the President. At the time of the Supreme Court's decision in this case, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation ending the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
  • Ex Parte Mitsuye Endo (1944)
    In this case, the Supreme Court held that the federal government could not continue to hold citizens of Japanese ancestry who were "concededly loyal" to the United States, though the ruling did not address the military actions that enforced exclusion. Mitsuye Endo was released. At the time of the decision in this case, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation ending the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
  • Proclamation 4417 - An American Promise (1976)
    This proclamation issued by President Gerald Ford confirmed the termination of Executive Order 9066, which had authorized the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II.
  • Korematsu v. United States (1984)
    In this case, Korematsu challenged his 1942 conviction by filing a writ of coram nobis, which asserted that his original conviction was so flawed as to represent a grave injustice and should be reversed. The judge granted the writ, thereby voiding Korematsu's conviction.
  • Civil Liberties Act (1988)
    This act granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been removed from their homes and incarcerated in concentration camps by the United States government during World War II. It also made restitution to Native Americans in Alaska who were interred by both the Japanese and Americans.