In the immediate aftermath of Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, hysteria, fear, and racist hostility toward Japanese Americans were rampant throughout the United States. This, too, was a factor in Roosevelt signing the internment order.
The Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s internment order in the 1944 Fred Korematsu case. A review of the arguments, decades later, revealed that the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice suppressed, altered, and destroyed intelligence reports showing that Japanese Americans posed no significant military threat.
In the immediate aftermath of Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, hysteria, fear, and racist hostility toward Japanese Americans were rampant throughout the United States. This, too, was a factor in Roosevelt signing the internment order.
A b/w photo of a grocery store in Oakland, California, 1942. The large sign reading, "I am an American" was the Japanese-American owner's response to the widespread fear and hatred many Americans expressed toward U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Photo credit: Dorothea Lange
Image source: U.S. National Archives
On this day in 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to forcibly relocate more than a hundred thousand Japanese Americans to internment camps.
#Injustice #Hysteria #Fear #Intolerance #FabricatedCharges #SuppressedEvidence #History #OTD