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Pearl Harbor attacked
Japan was engaged in a war with China. Early in 1941 the United States had stopped exporting oil to Japan. Oil is a strategic material for any mechanized military force, and Japan had no domestic sources of oil.This angered Japan and they launched an attack at 6 am dec 7 1941, on Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. They attacked American carriers and navy ships. -
Presidential Proclamation No. 2525
Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, the president must inform every American citizen. -
President Roosevelt orders re-registration of suspected "enemy" aliens in West.
President Roosevelt orders the re-registration of suspected “enemy” aliens in the West and signs Executive Order No. 9066, which authorizes the evacuation of all persons from the West Coast who are considered a threat to national security -
President Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066
President Roosevelt authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. -
President Roosevelt signed Public Law 503
To provide a penalty for violations of restrictions or orders with respect to persons entering, remaining in, leaving or committing any act in military areas or zones. -
Secretary of War Henry Stimson announced plans to form an all-Japanese American Combat team to be made up of volunteers from both the mainland and Hawaii.
The General Staff of the U.S. Army made the decision to allow native born Japanese Americans to volunteer and serve in a segregated unit. There was also input from Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy and others from the government who were in favor of creating a combat unit of Japanese Americans. Other organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) also lobbied the government to allow Japanese Americans to serve in the armed forces. -
Registration (loyalty questionnaire) of all persons over 17 years of age for Army recruitment, segregation and relocation begins at most of the internment camps
The relocation centers, however, are NOT and ever were intended to be internment camps or places of confinement. They were established for two primary purposes: (1) To provide communities where evacuees might live and contribute, through their work, to their own support pending their gradual reabsorption into private employment and normal American life; and (2) to serve as wartime homes for those evacuees who might be unable or unfit to relocate in ordinary American communities. Under regulation -
D-Day
Iwo Jima means "Sulfur Island", an apt description of eight square miles of volcanic, treeless scrub. Dominated by 546-foot Mount Suribachi, the island became the site of one of the bloodiest battles in World War II. Its strategic importance lay in its location halfway between Japan and the airfields of the B-29 Super Fortresses located on the Mariana Islands. Capture of Iwo Jima by the Americans would provide an emergency landing field for crippled bombers returning from their bombing raids on -
The WRA announced that all internment camps would be closed before the end of 1945 and the entire WRA program would be liquidated on June 30, 1946.
Eventually the government allowed internees to leave the concentration camps if they enlisted in the U.S. Army. This offer was not well received. Only 1,200 internees chose to do so. -
Hirabayashi v U.S. and Yasui v U.S : The Supreme Court rules that a curfew may be imposed against one group of Americans citizens based solely on ancestry and that Congress in enacting Public law 77-503 authorized the implementation of Executive Order 906
Two important legal cases were brought against the United States concerning the internment. The landmark cases were Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), and Korematsu v. United States (1944). The defendants argued their fifth amendment rights were violated by the U.S. government because of their ancestry. In both cases, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government. -
V-J day
On August 14, 1945, it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II. Since then, both August 14 and August 15 have been known as "Victory over Japan Day," or simply "V-J Day." The term has also been used for September 2, 1945, when Japan's formal surrender took place aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. Coming several months after the surrender of Nazi Germany, Japan's capitulation in the Pacific brought six years of hostil -
All WRA Internment camps are closed except for Tule Lake Center
Internment camps for Japanese were shut down Oct 15 1945 freeing all japanese citizens. This happened after V-J day and the Americans won.
