Day of Remembrance

Executive Order 9066 and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II

Civilian exclusion order #5, posted at First and Front streets, directing removal by April 7 of persons of Japanese ancestry, from the first San Francisco section to be affected by evacuation, April 1942.
Library of Congress

 Two notices in San Francisco, posted side by side, reflect the fear of Japanese invasion in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The California Historical Society joins the nation in observing the annual Day of Remembrance on February 19, when in 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order paved the way for the removal of people of Japanese descent, citizens and noncitizens alike, from their homes and communities along the West Coast during World War II.

As the Japanese American Citizens League explains, “Every February, the Japanese American community commemorates Executive Order 9066 as a reminder of the impact the incarceration experience has had on our families, our community, and our country.”

We remember this day with an essay by the noted historian Charles Wollenberg on the precedence of discrimination and racism in our state’s history and its legacy today.

This Day in History - August 10: The U.S. Rights a Wrong

Japanese Americans sell their belongings prior to evacuation from the West Coast. 
Photographer: Russell Lee. Library of Congress. 

On August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act which issued a formal apology and a sum of $20,000, to every American of Japanese ancestry imprisoned in “relocation” camps during World War II.  “Here we admit a wrong,” said President Reagan in his accompanying remarks, “Here we affirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”