The Unacknowledged Lesson: Earl Warren and the Japanese Relocation Controversy
G. Edward White
Between February and August 1942, about 112,000 Japanese-Americans were transported from their homes along the Pacific Coast in California, Oregon, and Washington to "relocation centers" in California, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. The Japanese, about two-thirds of whom had been born in America, were housed in these centers until January 1945, when they were officially released. The relocation centers resembled concentration camps: they were enclosed with barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards, privacy and independent family life for the incarcerated Japanese were almost nonexistent, and the daily lives of the Japanese were controlled by their supervisors. The relocation centers were not, however, instruments of genocide or barbarism or even brutality; in this sense the term "concentration camp" incorrectly describes them. The centers did represent, though, the first and only episode in American history in which the United States government forcibly interned American citizens on the basis of their racial and ethnic affiliation.
