Description

The World War II internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans is variously described as wartime necessity, hysteria, economic exploitation, fascist duplication, and unbridled racial prejudice. The evacuation from the west coast and internment inland was authorized by Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in February, 1942. In 1943 the U. S. Supreme Court in Hirabayashi v. United States upheld restrictions placed by the government on Japanese Americans on the coast. Then the case was used as precedent to legally justify removal as a military necessity by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States. This class will follow the story from 1942 to 1988 when President Ronald Reagan signed into law an apology to the survivors and authorized a payment to each as belated compensation for their losses.