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| FEBRUARY 19, 2017
5
CTORFICTION?
1945
Roosevelt lifts theWest Coast exclusion orders,
and JapaneseAmericans begin returning to
their pre-war homes—amid awave o
against returnees. TheWRA closes
most of the camps, but keeps Tule Lake open
to hold renunciants slated for deportation.
d to complete a
ost pass the test,
iticize their treatment.
prison camp inTule
yal can apply for
ny relocate to the
merican soldiers and
nit called the
1944
JapaneseAmericans begin receivingdraft notices in camp. Most obey
theorders, but 300 youngmen refuse to report for dutyuntil their
rights are restored.
Others express anger at thegovernment by renouncing their U.S.
citizenship and/or applying for repatriation to Japan. Themajority
of these “renunciants” are inTuleLake, where extremeovercrowding
and the implementationofmartial lawhave added to theunrest.
Two legal challenges brought by JapaneseAmericans reach the
SupremeCourt. TheCourt rules that “concededly loyal” citizens
must be released, but condones targeting JapaneseAmericans
basedon race as a “militarynecessity.”
National Archives &
RecordsAdministration
National Archives &RecordsAdministration
attleTimes’ coverageofWorldWar II
todescribe “good” and “bad” Japanese
sloyal, or “Nipponese” to imply a connection
fectedpeople’s thinking at the time?Do the
What happened to Japanese Americans
duringWorldWar II is commonly called
“internment,” but this term is misleading
as it refers only to the detention of non-
citizens. “Incarceration” is more accurate
because two-thirds of those sent to camp
were U.S. citizens.
What to call the camps can also be
confusing. The euphemism “relocation
center” made conditions sound better than
they were, but the prison camps where
Japanese Americans were confined—
surrounded by barbed wire fences and
patrolled by armed guards—meet the
dictionary definition of a concentration
camp. Use of this term is not meant to
compare Japanese American incarceration
to the Holocaust, where the term
“concentration camp” might itself
be considered euphemistic.
WORDSMATTER
Disloyal Japs Fed Well,
Idle While Nearby Crops Rot
