On this day in labor history, the year was 1944.
That was the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescinded Executive Order 9066.
It had forcibly relocated over 120,000 Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government considered Japanese-Americans a national security threat.
By 1942, many were given less than a week’s notice to sell and store all property
Whole families were rounded up and taken away to desolate areas in the West and Southwest.
Up to this point, many Japanese-Americans in California were employed in the agricultural industry, some as tenant farmers.
They were responsible for 40% of all produce grown in that state, whose crops were valued as $40 million annually.
Over 6000 farms, consisting of 200,000 acres were confiscated.
Once interred, they were subjected to dire living conditions with little in the way of running water, sanitary facilities or medical care.
They were subject to forced labor in the construction of camp buildings and cultivation of near-barren lands.
The government hoped to make the camps self-sufficient.
In Poston, Arizona, they were made to build the infrastructure for Colorado River Tribes reservation in order to consolidate other tribes onto the land.
When Japanese-Americans were finally released, most found their stored belongings stolen and their homes, jobs and farms confiscated and redistributed.
After the war, they continued to face violence, job and housing shortages, and racial discrimination.
Ronald Reagan would sign the Civil Liberties Act in 1988.
It acknowledged that internment was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”
The act served as a formal apology and sought to distribute billions in reparations.
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May 2 - Our Thing is DRUM!
May 1 - Mayday Marchers Attacked in Cleveland
April 30 - Refinery Workers Walk Off the Job
April 29 - Allis-Chalmers and the Road to Taft-Hartley
April 28 - OSHA Goes Into Effect
April 27 - Disaster in West Virginia
April 26 - National Guard Ousts Montgomery Ward CEO
April 25 - UAW Mobilizes Against Taft-Hartley
April 24 - The California Spinach Riot
April 23 - Sitting Down for Dignity at Ford
April 22 - The Red Jacket Mine Explosion
April 21 - The Hated Taylor Law Takes Effect
April 20 - Deepwater Horizon Explosion Kills 11
April 19 -The Daughters of Mother Jones
April 18 - We Have Fed You All A thousand Years
April 17 - Fatal Explosion in West, Texas
April 16 - Jacob Coxey is Born
April 15 - Telephone Girls Cripple New England Bell
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