Tragedy of the Japanese American Roundup, Expulsion and Incarceration

The roundup, expulsion, and incarceration of more than a hundred thousand Japanese Americans in the months after the beginning of the Pacific War between the United States and Japan is a major blot on the record of American democracy. The event attracted little attention during the war and in the decades immediately following it. The mistreatment and abuse was suffered by West Coast Japanese American civilian men, women and children. Over two-thirds of the Japanese were American citizens.

According to the census of 1940 there were almost 127 ,000 Japanese in the United States. Forty-seven thousand were persons who had emigrated from Japan before 1925 and were aliens ineligible for citizenship. Their children who were born in the United States, the Nisei, were citizens of the United States. The terms issei, nisei, sansei, etc. are used to differentiate the generations of Japanese immigrants. They are based on the Japanese words for one, two, three,--ichi, ni, san--etc. A Nisei, thus, is a person born in the United States--or elsewhere outside of Japan--of immigrant parents.

The Fourteenth Amendment gave them all the rights and privileges of that citizenship. However, their citizenship was second-class, especially in California and other West Coast states where almost nine of ten Japanese Americans then lived. In these coastal states they experienced discrimination in employment, housing, and education. The prejudice against people of color was the chief cause of discrimination in America, but for Japanese Americans there was the added factor of the trans-Pacific rivalry between Japan and the United States. In the decades after World War I, most Americans did not like Japan's aggression in China. Some Japanese Americans imagined that they might become victims in a future war between America and Japan. Although this fear was not generally shared, many of the Nisei believed that things would be very difficult for their alien parents, but their own citizenship would protect them from drastic federal action.