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Day of Remembrance: Today, 79 Years Ago
Our Country’s Shameful Past and Present
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to concentration camps. Now, 79 years later, the tendency to imagine hostile enemies within our own nation has not changed.
In response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 authorized the military to forcibly evacuate all persons deemed a threat to national security. This is how some 120,000 Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were U.S. citizens, were stripped of their property and assets to live for four years in the deserts further inland.
Not a single Japanese American was charged of espionage or sabotage against the United States.
“Our Country”
Roosevelt, in signing the Executive Order, declared that the U.S. would employ “the great arsenal of democracy” by stripping its own citizens of freedom, dignity, and constitutional rights. White Americans who were considered safer, righteous citizens were emboldened to show a “spirit of patriotism and sacrifice” by supporting this effort. Thus was the creation of an enemy within our own nation, and the justification of violence against one group in order to unify the nation…
