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· Internment: 2/1/2006
The Japanese American Internment refers to the forcible relocation of approximately 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, 62 percent of whom were United States citizens, from the west coast of the United States during World War II to hastily constructed housing facilities called War Relocation Camps in remote portions of the nation's interior.
During the war, an appeal reached the Supreme Court contesting the government's authority to intern people based on their ancestry; the court sided with the government. The U.S. government officially apologized for the internment in 1988, saying it was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership", and paid reparations to survivors. Some reparations were also paid in 1948, and Congress passed eight compensation-related laws between 1951 and 1978.
President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment with United States Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used forthwith to declare most of the Pacific coast as "Military Area Number One", and all people with Japanese ancestry were then declared "excluded". However, residents of German and Italian descent were not excluded. |
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