Washington, D.C. • February 19, 1942 Eighty-four years ago on this date in 1942, celebrated today as the Day of Remembrance, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It authorized the War Department to designate “military areas” in the U.S. and admit, exclude, or remove from these areas anyone whom the department felt to…
Washington, D.C. • December 18, 1944 On December 7 and 8, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an unprovoked air and sea attack on U.S. military assets in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Philippines, respectively. On December 11, 1941, the U.S. Congress declared war on the aggressor nation. Seventy…
Washington, D.C. • November 7, 1941 Relations between the U.S. and Japan grew chilly in mid-1941 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the U.S. and embargoed oil and gasoline exports to Japan in retaliation for that country’s occupation of Indochinese airfields in what is today Vietnam. The year before Roosevelt had banned…
London, England • June 25, 1940 Under the threat of imminent invasion from Nazi Germany, the British government on this date in 1940 began interning all suspect aliens living in the United Kingdom. Thousands of Germans, Austrians, and Italians, including Jewish refugees from the Nazis, were placed behind barbed wire in England (racetracks and unfinished…
Tulelake, Modoc County, California • April 15, 1942 On this date in 1942, in a remote, underdeveloped reclamation district roughly 35 miles/56 kilometers southeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and about 10 miles/16 kilometers from the town of Tulelake (or Newell), the federal government began construction of the Tule Lake Relocation Center for persons of Japanese ancestry forcibly deported from…
Washington, D.C. • December 8, 1941 Although the devastating Japanese surprise attack on U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, came as a shock to most Americans, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration had already begun weighing possible responses to an outbreak of war with Japan, Germany, and Italy—countries treaty-bound in a mutual…
London, England · June 25, 1940 Under the threat of imminent invasion from Nazi Germany, the British government on this date in 1940 began interning all suspect aliens living in the United Kingdom. Thousands of Germans, Austrians, and Italians, including Jewish refugees from the Nazis, were placed behind barbed wire in England (racetracks and unfinished…
San Leandro, California · May 30, 1942 On this date in California in 1942, California-born Japanese American Fred Korematsu was arrested for refusing to comply with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War and his military commanders to require all Japanese Americans be removed from designated “military areas” and…
Washington, D.C. · February 19, 1942 On this date in 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It authorized the War Department to designate “military areas” in the U.S. and exclude from them anyone whom the department felt to be a danger to the security of the nation. Although the order was carefully…
London, England · June 25, 1940 Under the threat of imminent invasion from Nazi Germany, the British government on this date in 1940 began interning all suspect aliens living in the United Kingdom. Some 300,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians, including Jewish refugees from the Nazis, were placed behind barbed wire in England (racetracks and unfinished housing…