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President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 which allows military authorities to exclude anyone from anywhere without trial or hearings. Though the subject of only limited interest at the time, this order set the stage for the entire forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.
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Gen. John L. DeWitt makes a Public Proclamation Number 1 which creates Military Areas 1 and 2. Military Area 1 includes the western portion of California, Oregon and Washington, and part of Arizona while Military Area 2 includes the rest of these states. The proclamation also hints that people might be excluded from Military Area 1.
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The president signs the Executive Order 9102, establishing the War Relocation Authority (WRA), with Milton Eisenhower as director. It is estimated $5.5 million dollers.
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The first Civilian Exclusion Order was issued by the Army for the Bainbridge Island area near Seattle. Forty-five families there were given one week to prepare. By the end of October, 108 exclusion orders were issued, and all Japanese Americans in Military Area 1 and the California portion of 2 would be incarcerated.
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Germany surrenders and ends the war in England.
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An atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. The war in the Pacific would end on August 14.
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Tule Lake was closed, culminating "an incrediblle mass evacuation in reverse." In the month prior to the closing, 5,000 internes had to be moved, many of whom were old,impoverished, or mentally ill and with no place to go.
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U.S. District Judge Louis E. Goodman orderd that the petitioners in Wayne Collins' suit of December 13, 1945 be released; native-born American citizens could not be converted to enemy aliens and could not be imprisoned or sent to Japan on the basis of renunciation. Three hundred and two people are finally released from Crystal City, Texas and Seabrook Farms, New Jersey on September 6, 1947.
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President Truman signs the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, a measure to compensate Japanese Americans for certain economic losses attributable to their forced evacuation. Although $28 million dollers was needed to be paid out through provision of the act, it would be largely ineffective even on the limited scope in which it operated.
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A resolution is announced by the Japanese American Citizen League's Northern California-Western Nevada District Council calling for reparations for the World War II deaths of Japanese Americans. This resolution would have the JACL seek a bill in Congress awarding individual compensation on a per diem basis, tax-free.
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Representative Mike Lowry introduced the World War II Japanese-American Human Rights Violations Act into Congress. This NCJAR-sponsored bill was largely based on research done by ex-members of the Seattle JACL. It proposes payments of $15,000 per victim plus an additional $15 per day interned. Given the choice between this bill and the JACL-supported study commission bill introduced two months earlier, Congress opts for the latter.
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The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) still holds a public hearing in Washington, D.C. as part of its investigation into the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Similar hearings would be held in many other cities throughout the rest of 1981. The emotional testimony by more than 750 Japanese American witnesses about their wartime experiences would prove cathartic for the community and a turning point in the redress movement.
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The CWRIC issues the formal recommendations to Congress concerning redress for Japanese Americans interned during WWII. They include the call for individual payments of $20,000 to each of those who spent time in the concentration camps and are still alive.
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H.R. 442 is signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It provides for individual payments of $20,000 to each surviving internee and a $1.25 billion education fund among other provisions.
