December 17 A Stain on the American Experience

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That was the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescinded Executive Order 9066.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.