The Hirano family with a photo of their oldest son Shigera Hirano, a U.S. Army sergeant in the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team. As he served overseas, his family were prisoners at the Colorado River internment camp. Photo: National Archives
Eighty years ago today, then-President Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order that led to the forced removal and mass incarceration of about 120,000 Japanese Americans into 10 American internment camps.
Why it matters: Powerful archival photos of the mass incarceration provide a vivid reminder of how badly the U.S. government mistreated Japanese Americans.
Survivors and activists have also pushed Congress to help preserve this history by designating one of the former prisons — Amache, in Granada, Colorado — as a national memorial.
San Francisco, April 25, 1942. Two friends play a final game, awaiting their forced removal to an internment camp. Photo: Dorothea Lange for War Relocation Authority (WRA) via National ArchivesThis sign was placed in an Oakland store window on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans could only bring what they could carry to the camps, leaving behind countless businesses, homes and community ties. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via Library of CongressArranging flowers for the last day of service at Japanese Independent Congregational Church on April 26, 1942. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via National Archives
Some people were given only six days notice to pack up their belongings and leave their homes and communities.
Los Angeles, April 1942. Families prepare to board trains to the Manzanar detention center, 250 miles away. Photo: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesCenterville, Calif. on May 5, 1942. A woman waits for the bus to the detention center. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via National Archives
San Pedro, Calif., in April 1942. The last Redondo Beach residents leave for internment camps. Photo: Library of CongressPeople line up for the mess hall at the Tanforan temporary detention center, a former racetrack in San Bruno, Calif. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via National ArchivesHorse stalls converted into family housing at Tanforan. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via National Archives
The WRA forbade photographers from making images of soldiers, guard towers or barbed wire, but a few photos of the camps’ military presence exist.
Military police on duty in a watch-tower at the Santa Anita temporary detention center in Arcadia, Calif. Photo: Clem Albers for WRA via National ArchivesPrisoners make camouflage nets for the War Department at Manzanar, one of several War and Navy Department projects carried out at detention centers. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via National Archives
Children who grew up or were born in the internment camps — the last people who witnessed the incarceration first-hand — are now elders or have passed away.
A grandfather teaches his grandson to walk at Manzanar. Photo: Dorothea Lange for WRA via National ArchivesFamilies wait in line to finally leave the Gila River prison camp as an officer checks the departure list, in Rivers, Ariz. in Sept. 1945. Photo: Hikaru Iwasaki for WRA via National Archives
When President Rooseveltrescinded Executive Order 9066 in December 1944, the WRA began the long process of shutting down the camps.
After decades of organizing by survivors and their families, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, which gave surviving internees $20,000 and a presidential apology as reparations for the wrongful incarceration — though many elders had died by then.
Editor's note: A caption in this story has been corrected to show the date the sign was placed in the window was Dec. 8, 1941, not 1942.
