Executive Order 9066
Three words. One date. Anger that is hard to explain.
February 19, 1942 was the date that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.
This order declared that the military could zone any area they deemed as an area of vital security and could exclude any persons they deemed as a possible threat from the designated area.
The military declared the west coast of the US as one of these areas and the military and FBI began removing 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry (plus 10,000 more in Canada) the vast majority of whom were American citizens, from their homes and moving them first to "relocation centers," away from the coasts, then on to one of 10 concentration camps in states across the country.
February 19, 1942 was the date that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.
This order declared that the military could zone any area they deemed as an area of vital security and could exclude any persons they deemed as a possible threat from the designated area.
The military declared the west coast of the US as one of these areas and the military and FBI began removing 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry (plus 10,000 more in Canada) the vast majority of whom were American citizens, from their homes and moving them first to "relocation centers," away from the coasts, then on to one of 10 concentration camps in states across the country.
While I was not alive during this time, my parents and aunts and uncles were.
My dad's family lost their farm and almost everything they owned.
My grandmother and the two youngest kids went to one camp with only what they could carry in two suitcases.
My oldest uncle had a filling station he purchased taken away.
He avoided internment because he was accepted at bible college in Oklahoma and the military figured that was far enough away from the west coast.
Three aunts were forced to choose between going to the camp with their mother or going to camps with their fiancés, splitting up the family even more. They lost their jobs and college education was put on hold while they figured out where to live and what college would accept them.
Three aunts were forced to choose between going to the camp with their mother or going to camps with their fiancés, splitting up the family even more. They lost their jobs and college education was put on hold while they figured out where to live and what college would accept them.
It destroyed the fabric of the lives of my family, and by extension, the fabric of all lives of Americans of Japanese ancestry on the west coast.
It is hard to explain to someone that wasn't connected to this event, but my family (and those of the other internees) were humiliated by their country calling them traitors or for even suspecting them of being able to carry out treasonous acts like sabotage (there were no cases of any American of Japanese ancestry committing sabotage). They were angry because their country completely ignored their civil rights. This was further fueled by the US asking all of these people to fill out a loyalty questionnaire on top of that. To top it off, when the soldiers of the
442nd Regimental Combat Team, an army unit consisting of all Americans of Japanese ancestry (including my father) and is the most decorated unit in US military history, came home during and after the war they couldn't meet their families in the camps. They had to meet in a designated cottage and only for an hour. The families had their rights, freedoms, and property taken from them. Their sons fought and died for the country and they were not allowed to get the homecoming they deserved.
I'm ranting a bit now, but it is hard not to.
The anger, humiliation, and unjustness of that order and those events are something that was passed down to me and the other third and fourth generation of Americans of Japanese ancestry. It wasn't something that the family said I had to feel this way about. It is just there.
The anger, humiliation, and unjustness of that order and those events are something that was passed down to me and the other third and fourth generation of Americans of Japanese ancestry. It wasn't something that the family said I had to feel this way about. It is just there.
An angry cauldron that gets stirred on February 19th every year.
The anger and humiliation gets passed on because we learn about this event via what it did to our parents and grandparents. We see the burden they carry from it. Even though that generation is almost gone, that anger is still there. The sadness and sense of loss. The post traumatic stress that manifested itself in alcoholism or other destructive ways.
Our country did this to our family who were citizens of this country.
The anger and humiliation gets passed on because we learn about this event via what it did to our parents and grandparents. We see the burden they carry from it. Even though that generation is almost gone, that anger is still there. The sadness and sense of loss. The post traumatic stress that manifested itself in alcoholism or other destructive ways.
Our country did this to our family who were citizens of this country.
For all the talk these days about alleged "systemic racism" in this country, it is good to realize that "systemic racism" is only part of a society whose leaders put it there.
Executive Order 9066 is a primary example of that.
Laws like that are up to us as a society to get rid of or correct, however once that law is corrected it is also up to the affected people of the former law to demonstrate to society why the law was stupid to begin with.
Laws like that are up to us as a society to get rid of or correct, however once that law is corrected it is also up to the affected people of the former law to demonstrate to society why the law was stupid to begin with.
If the Americans of Japanese ancestry back then had been causing acts of sabotage, or claiming that they were loyal to Japan, people might justify that Executive Order 9066 was needed. Since the Americans of Japanese ancestry didn't act that way, there is no denying the wrongfulness of Executive Order 9066.
The fact that Executive Order 9066 was even made law in the first place will forever piss me off.
People might read this and say that I should "get over it" because it happened long ago or because I wasn't there or that I shouldn't worry about it because "Americans of Japanese ancestry have traditionally done well in our society (This was really told to me... a story for another time) despite the internment.
Once again I say "bull cookies."
If it happened once in this country it can happen again.
To paraphrase Mel Brooks, a Holocaust survivor who features nazis somewhere in his movies, he said you can fight an injustice by making people remember it by either being mad at something, or making people laugh about it.
For Executive Order 9066 I'm choosing to be mad about it.
Ev
A Heck of A Proud American of Japanese Ancestry
People might read this and say that I should "get over it" because it happened long ago or because I wasn't there or that I shouldn't worry about it because "Americans of Japanese ancestry have traditionally done well in our society (This was really told to me... a story for another time) despite the internment.
Once again I say "bull cookies."
If it happened once in this country it can happen again.
To paraphrase Mel Brooks, a Holocaust survivor who features nazis somewhere in his movies, he said you can fight an injustice by making people remember it by either being mad at something, or making people laugh about it.
For Executive Order 9066 I'm choosing to be mad about it.
Ev
A Heck of A Proud American of Japanese Ancestry
