The Japanese Internment

A Web Page by Sorelle Friedler

In February of 1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the relocation of all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States. This order, motivated by the anti-Japanese feeling in the U.S., the fear of Japanese spies, and the desire of a few politicians and farmers to take over the land owned by the Japanese, resulted in the relocation of approximately 110,000 people. Two thirds of these people were born in America and were legal citizens, and of the 10 people found to be spying for the Japanese during World War II, not one was of Japanese ancestry. Not many people outside of the Japanese-Americans protested this decision, and the Supreme Court upheld this decision in Korematsu vs. U.S.. The Japanese-Americans were kept in internment camps until 1945 when the government started to free them. In 1982 the government officially appoligized to the Japanese-Americans who had been interned, and in 1988 Congress voted to give each of them two thousand dollars as compensation.