In February of 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, effectively forcing the relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to one of ten incarceration camps located across the western half of the United States.

Driven by racial and xenophobic fears, Executive Order 9066 and the Japanese American incarceration camps that followed are now remembered as dark moments in our nation’s history — when they are remembered at all.

Forced into incarceration camps in places that many of those forcibly relocated had never been to, Japanese Americans faced economic, physical, and emotional hardships as their loyalties and citizenship were questioned all under a false premise of national security.

"I am an American."

— A sign hanging outside of a store front in Oakland, California, placed there by the store’s owner, a Japanese American and graduate of the University of California, after Executive Order 9066 was issued

Enacted after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 was a xenophobic decision that called for forced relocation of U.S. residents simply based on the premise of ethnicity. Anyone who was at least 1/16th Japanese, including thousands of young children and the elderly, was forcibly removed from their homes and communities.

Japanese Americans living in the “West Coast Evacuation Zone” were given little notice to pack what they could carry. With limited information about where they were going and when they might be able to return to their homes, they had almost no time to make arrangements for their homes, farms, businesses, and more to be taken care of. Overnight, the fact that many of the Japanese Americans were vital parts of their communities — as friends, acquaintances, neighbors — was lost.

"I have known no other nation than the United States. I have been born, reared, and educated in American institutions. My mind has absorbed American influence and ideals of freedom. And I would like very much to continue residing in the atmosphere of these ideals."

— Excerpt from a 1944 letter by Tadao Mukaikata declining repatriation while he was incarcerated at the Amache (Granada) incarceration camp

During the first year in the incarceration camps, all adults were administered what would eventually become informally known as the “loyalty questionnaire.”

In this questionnaire, two particular questions (#27 and #28) proved exceptionally confusing. The first asked if the individual would serve in the U.S. military whenever and wherever ordered and the second asked if the individual would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States. After having been forcibly relocated simply on the basis of their ethnicity, many had issues answering the questions and were thus deemed potentially unloyal. Many of the men who answered no to both questions became known as “no-no boys.”

To this day, the questionnaire brings up questions about what we consider loyalty and the arbitrary nature of assigning “loyal” and “disloyal” labels.

"If they want to segregate me they can do it. If they want to take my citizenship away, they can do it. If this country doesn't want me they can throw me out. What do they know about loyalty?"

— Transcript from an interview with Morgan Yamanaka who answered no to both loyalty questions while incarcerated

In 1945, as World War II was drawing to a close, the federal government started to plan for the closing of the camps, deeming the period of “military necessity” for the camps to be over.

By the time the war had ended and the camps were closed, Japanese Americans had lost a collective $400 million in property during their incarceration. Many tried to return to their communities to find their homes, farms, and property were no longer theirs. Many gave up returning altogether and relocated somewhere else entirely after the war.

"My grandmother was in her 60s, my grandfather was 75. We had no idea where we were going, how long we would be gone, what would happen to us. So she didn’t believe she would ever come back."

— Excerpt from an interview with Marielle Tsukamoto in 2019 reflecting on her experience in the incarceration camps. Marielle was just 5 years old when her family was forcibly relocated from Sacramento, California.