On February 19, 1942, in response to intense lobbying following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order (EO) 9066, which mandated the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. During 1942, the federal government forced more than 120,000 Japanese Americans (the majority of whom were U.S. citizens and half of whom were children) out of their homes, schools, jobs, and businesses, often on less than a week’s notice. Evacuees lived for several months in horse stables, livestock pavilions, and temporary barracks at “Assembly Centers” before being moved to ten hastily built “internment camps” across six Western states for the remainder of WWII.

Four decades later, archival research by the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded in 1983 that the mass exclusion, removal and detention of Japanese Americans were caused not by “military necessity” but by “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

It is painful to realize that the President who signed laws we still proudly implement here at the Department, such as the Social Security Act, National Apprenticeship Act, and Fair Labor Standards Act, also wrongfully imprisoned over 120,000 innocent civilians. But those who were wronged, their families, and the country as a whole deserve to have a truthful accounting. From that place of truth and acknowledgment, we can ensure that as a country, and as a government, we do better. We can use this painful episode in our nation’s history as an opportunity to pledge our commitment and rededication to the principles our country was founded upon: freedom, justice, fairness, and equality.

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of EO 9066, I encourage you to attend the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) virtual events scheduled for this weekend (Friday, February 18 – Sunday, February 20): https://americanhistory.si.edu/day-of-remembrance. This program is inspired by the Smithsonian’s 2020 initiative, Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past, with the goal of “using history and reconciliation to contextualize and transform our understandings and responses to race and racism.”

For an introduction to the historical experiences of Japanese Americans and implications for today, see the NMAH digital exhibit, A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution and the NMAH Japanese American Incarceration Era Collection. {You can also visit the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II near he U.S. Capitol.}