1790-1940

March 26, 1790.  The U.S. Congress through the act of 1790, decrees that “any alien, being a free white person who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for a term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof.” The phrase “free white person” remained intact until 1873 when “persons of African nativity or descent” was added. This act would be used to deny citizenship to Japanese and other Asian immigrants until the mid-20th Century.

1848. On the mainland, the first major influx of Chinese labor begins, first for the Gold Rush and then for working on the railroads, in mining and in the lumber industry.

1853-54. Commodore Matthew Perry arrives with a fleet of warships in Japan and begins the opening of Japan to the West.

1869. The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony is established in California. It is disbanded in 1879 because the weather was unsuitable for silk farming.

1880.  California's anti-miscegination law passed.  Prohibits the marraige of a white person to a "negro, mulatto or Mongolian."

May 6, 1882. Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act over the veto of President James Garfield. Chinese immigration is essentially shut off for the next sixty years.

1885. Japanese laborers are recruited to the plantations of Hawaii after the Chinese Exclusion Act cuts off that labor supply. By 1900, there are 80,000 Japanese, 40% of the population, in Hawaii. Because there are no restrictions on women immigrants, families are formed and many decide to stay.

1900. Many Japanese laborers move from Hawaii to the mainland.

February 23, 1905. The San Francisco Chronicle front page headline reads: “The Japanese Invasion: The Problem of the Hour.” This launches an unrelenting string of editorials against the Japanese that serves to inflame the public. The Asiatic Exclusion League is formed, with the first meeting attended by many labor leaders.

1907. In California, anti-Japanese labor groups bring about the segregation of Japanese students in San Francisco schools. The Japanese government protests, and in negotiations with President Theodore Roosevelt, what is called the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908 limiting the number of laborers who could immigrate to the U.S. is established. There were loopholes that allowed family members to continue coming.

1909. In California, Japanese farmers develop undesirable desert and marshlands into fertile agricultural farms. They begin buying and leasing these lands.

May 19, 1913. California Governor Hiram Johnson signs the Alien Land Law to become effective on August 10. This law prohibits “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning land.

1920. The new 1920 Alien Land Law, a more stringent measure to close loopholes such as buying land under the names of underage citizen children, is passed. Some still get around these restrictions by enlisting the help of sympathetic white friends, etc.

1922. The Japanese community had organized a fight for the right to become naturalized U.S. citizens by mounting a test case. In 1922, after a ten year legal struggle, the U.S. Supreme Court in Ozawa v. the U.S., declares that Japanese persons were ineligible for citizenship because they are not white.

1923. The U.S. Supreme Court upholds California’s Alien Land Law.

May 26, 1924. President Calvin Coolidge signs the 1924 immigration bill into law, effectively ending Japanese immigration to the U.S.

1925. The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Alien Land Laws of California and Washington State. It also strips Hidemitsu Toyota of his U.S. citizenship granted in 1921 after his service in World War I.

1930. The first convention of the Japanese American Citizens League is held in Seattle, Washington. This organization has spread across the U.S. and continues to be the most important nationwide Japanese American organization today.

1930 to 1941. Many Japanese and Japanese American organizations in Hawaii and on the mainland are formed, particularly work-related groups in the face of discriminatory practices by white labor, farming, fishing and other  interests. They represented the community in many ways.  E.g., The Union Flower Market (formed in 1930 by Japanese and Caucasian growers excluded from the Southern California Flower Market) sues the Southern California Flower Market for $300,000 damages, the largest lawsuit in the history of the Southern California Japanese American community. The suit drags on for three years before being decided in favor of the defendant.  

September 18, 1931. The “Manchurian Incident” results in Japan’s attack on Manchuria where it establishes a puppet government. Japan continues what it calls wars of liberation on the Asian mainland.

April 1933. To counter American criticism of Germany’s anti-Semitic laws, Adolf Hitler cites America’s anti-Asian discriminatory laws. Germany continues to move aggressively in Europe.

1937. Undeclared war breaks out when Japan attacks China. This is strongly condemned by other countries. Some Japanese Americans support Japan’s war effort by sending funds.

1939. Germany invades Poland, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

1940. The U.S. imposes an embargo on scrap metal exports to Japan. Relations between the two countries are becoming strained.


1941

July 25, 1941. A Presidential Order freezes Japanese assets in the United States and causes a run on Japanese banks.

August 18, 1941. In a letter to President Roosevelt, Representative John Dingell of Michigan suggests incarcerating 10,000 Hawaiian Japanese Americans as hostages to ensure “good behavior” on the part of Japan.

October-November, 1941. Curtis B. Munson, special representative of President Roosevelt, gathers information on Japanese American loyalty in Hawaii and the West Coast, as commissioned by the President and set up by John Franklin Carter, Roosevelt’s special investigator. He claims that there is little to fear from Japanese Americans.
The Munson Report echoes reports by Lieutenant Commander K. D. Ringle in his work for the Office of Naval Intelligence. Ringle believes that the Kibei (American citizens of Japanese descent educated in Japan) are the group most likely to be subversive and he recommends that they should be kept under surveillance.

December 7, 1941. Japan attacks the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Martial law is immediately declared in Hawaii. The U.S. declares war on Japan. There begins an immediate roundup of Issei (first generation non-citizens) in Hawaii and the mainland by the F.B.I. and local authorities, and within a few hours, 1,291 are in custody. After several months, more than 2,000 Japanese Americans are in Department of Justice internment camps. Many are held in various camps for the duration of World War II. 10% of the older male population is rounded up, leaving the coastal communities without leaders and many families without breadwinner/fathers.  

December 11, 1941. The Western Defense Command is established, with Lt. General John L. DeWitt as commander. The West Coast is declared a theater of war.


1942

January 23, 1942. It is declared that all Japanese American soldiers who were drafted on the mainland be assembled in camps in Arkansas and Alabama. Most end up at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, where they are stripped of weapons and relegated to performing non-battle related tasks. There is also a concerted effort to recruit Japanese American men to teach the Japanese language and to serve in the Pacific war sphere.

February 19, 1942. The Department of Justice and the War Department hold discussions on policy concerning the coastal Japanese Americans, resulting in a presidential executive order #9066 allowing military authorities to exclude anyone from anywhere without trial or hearings. Though it did not name specific groups, this order in effect set the stage for the forced removal of the entire population of Japanese Americans in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and parts of Arizona into concentration camps in the interior of the U.S. Soon, most are sent to assembly centers up and down the coast, temporary camps using race tracks, fair grounds, and other such facilities.
    In Hawaii, no mass exclusion is ordered, but 1037 (912 of them citizens) are put into camps in Hawaii and most are later sent to mainland camps.

February 25, 1942. The Navy informs Japanese American residents of Terminal Island near Los Angeles Harbor that they must leave in 48 hours. They are the first group to be removed en masse and as a result suffer especially heavy losses.

March 18, 1942. The President signs Executive Order 9102 establishing the War Relocation Authority with Milton Eisenhower as director. It is allocated $5.5 million. This agency (WRA) is to run the concentration camps that were being built to house the Japanese Americans.

March 21, 1942. The first advance groups of Japanese American “volunteers” arrive at Manzanar. Manzanar would later be designated one of the ten “relocation centers”, which would house approximately 120,000 persons.

March 28, 1942. Minoru Yasui presents himself to a Portland police station to test curfew orders. His case would become one of the test cases reaching the Supreme Court challenging the legality and constitutionality of the treatment of Japanese Americans.

March 27, 1942. A War Department order discontinues the induction of Nisei into the armed services on the West Coast. They are reclassified as 4-C, alien status.

May 1, 1942. Having “voluntarily resettled” in Denver, Nisei journalist James Omura writes a letter to a Washington law firm inquiring about retaining their services to seek legal action against the government for violations of civil and constitutional rights and seeking restitution for economic losses. He was unable to afford the $3,500 required to begin proceedings.

May 13, 1942. Forty five year old Ichiro Shimoda is shot dead by guards while trying to escape from Fort Sill, Oklahoma Enemy Alien Internment Camp, even though it was known that he suffered from mental illness.

May 16, Hikoji Takeuchi is shot at Manzanar. He was collecting scrap lumber and didn’t hear the guard’s shout. He recovers.

May 16, 1942. University of Washington student Gordon Hirabayashi goes to the local FBI office to challenge the constitutionality of the exclusion and curfew orders. His case would also go to the Supreme Court in 1943.

May 30, 1942. Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu is arrested in San Leandro, California, for violating the exclusion order.

June 3-6, 1942. The Battle of Midway results in a tremendous victory for the Allies, turning the tide of the war.

June 17, 1942. Milton Eisenhower resigns as WRA director. Dillon Myer from the Agriculture Department replaces him.

July 13, 1942. Mitsuye Endo files a petition of habeas corpus with the Federal District Court of San Francisco.

July 20, 1942. Endo Case heard before Judge Michael J. Roche in San Francisco. Roche takes one year for his decision.

July 27, 1942. 2 Issei men are shot to death by camp guards at Lordsburg, New Mexico enemy alien internment camp. Allegedly trying to escape, they had been too ill to walk from the train station to the camp.

August 4, 1942. In the assembly center at Santa Anita racetrack, a routine search for contraband triggers mass unrest. Military police with tanks and machine guns end the incident.

September 8, 1942. Korematsu case is heard before Judge Adolphus F. St. Sure in San Francisco.

October 20, 1942. President Roosevelt calls the “relocation centers” “concentration camps” at a press conference.

October 31, 1942. Second phase of exclusion and detention, the removal of Japanese Americans from the temporary “assembly centers” to the 10 permanent camps, is completed.

November, 1942. Special “citizen isolation” camps are established, first at Moab, Utah, then at Leupp, Arizona,  for “troublemakers”.

1942-1943. WRA begins to establish field offices in various cities to help with temporary leaves for agricultural work first, then for relocating internees. By the end of 1943, there are 42 such offices scattered across the country outside of the western states.

November 3, 1942.  Representing the national American Civil Liberties Union, Board Chairman John Haynes Holmes, General Council Arthur Garfield Hays, and Director Roger Baldwin write a letter to General John DeWitt. An excerpt: “…we cannot refrain from expressing to you our congratulations on so difficult a job accomplished with a minimum of hardship considering its unprecedented character. Never before were American military authorities confronted with an evacuation of this magnitude; and it is testimony to a high order of administrative organization that it was accomplished with so comparatively few complaints of injustice and mismanagement.”

November 14, 1942. An attack on a man widely perceived as an informer results in the arrest of two men at Poston. This incident soon develops into a camp wide strike. Unrest in other camps provokes strikes and near-riots.

November 1942. The Japanese American Citizens League, the only Japanese American organization allowed to exist by the government, had moved its headquarters with personnel from San Francisco to Salt  Lake  City. A special emergency meeting is convened by its National Council. Delegates from the 10 camps meet, pass a resolution asking for the reinstitution of Selective Service for Japanese American citizens.

December 5, 1942. Fred Tayama, a JACL delegate to the meeting in Salt Lake City, is beaten in Manzanar upon his return. Harry Ueno, president of the Kitchen Workers Union, is arrested and jailed in Independence, California. The arrest precipitates demonstrations resulting in the killing of 2 unarmed internees and the wounding of 8 others when the camp’s military police open fire on the crowd. 16 men are arrested in the aftermath and sent to Moab. The Issei among them are then sent to a Department of Justice internment camp at Missoula, Montana.

1942. During this year, 2264 Latin Americans of Japanese descent, 80% of them from Peru, are rounded up and sent to the U.S. to be exchanged for Americans in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. 500 were exchanged. At the end of the war, the remaining prisoners are classified as illegal immigrants and 900 are sent to Japan. Peru refuses to take their contingent back, but eventually, 100 are allowed back and the others remained in the U.S.


1943

January 28, 1943. Secretary of War Stimson announces the formation of a special all-volunteer combat team of Japanese Americans, prepares to start recruiting campaign in Hawaii and in the 10 camps. A special questionnaire is administered to all men of draft age in the camps.

February 3, 1943. WRA, using a slightly lengthened form of the military questionnaire and calling it a leave clearance questionnaire, begins its distribution in Tule Lake and Manzanar. Mandatory for everyone over the age of 17, it causes a huge uproar in both camps. The policy of selecting the “loyal” from the “disloyal” is set.

February 14, 1943. A total of 9,507 men volunteer for military service in Hawaii. In the camps, the final number of volunteers is 805.

February 21, 1943. 35 men from Tule Lake “Relocation Center” who refuse to fill out the questionnaire are arrested without warning and imprisoned.

April 1943. Activation and training of the volunteers begins at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. This unit is to be called the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

June 1, 1943. Supreme Court returns Korematsu case to Court of Appeals.

June 8, 1943. A subcommittee of the Dies Committee begins hearings to investigate charges that the WRA is “coddling” the incarcerated Japanese Americans. The testimony of WRA head Dillon Myer and others discredits the charges.

June 21, 1943. The Supreme Court upholds Yasui and Hirabayashi convictions for curfew violation while avoiding the issue of exclusion in Hirabayashi.

July 3, 1943. Judge Michael Roche dismisses Endo habeas corpus petition.

July 15, 1943. The WRA announces its segregation policy. Segregated are to be persons who “by their acts have indicated that their loyalties lie with Japan during the present hostilities or that their loyalties do not lie with the United States.”

August 1943. The California Assembly Interim Committee on the Japanese Problem, known as the Gannon Committee, is set up. It would hold an investigation on whether the forcibly removed Japanese Americans should be allowed to return to California.

September 13, 1943. The separation of internees at Tule Lake “Relocation Center” begins. “Loyal” inmates are to be transferred to the other camps, and “disloyals” to be brought to Tule Lake. A press release the next day states: “According to Dillon Myer…the people who will live in Tule Lake center will include: those who have asked to be repatriated or expatriated; a group which has refused to pledge loyalty to the United States; and those who had pledged loyalty to the United States but whose behavior in relocation centers or before evacuation had indicated that they are not truly loyal.”

September 1943. The 100th Infantry Battalion, comprised of Nisei soldiers, begins fighting in Europe.

October 1943. Troubles continue at Tule Lake. A special stockade is constructed to hold “troublemakers”.

November 5-August 8, 1944. Martial law is declared at Tule Lake and the Army takes over with tanks and machine guns.

1943.  Chinese Exclusion Act repealed.  Given naturalization after passing test on Consitution and English literacy. 

1943.  States in which interment camps are located pass legislation denying voting rights for American citizens in the camps. 


1944

January 14, 1944. Nisei eligibility for the draft is restored. Reaction is mixed.

January 26, 1944. The Fair Play Committee is organized at Heart Mountain based on Kiyoshi Okamoto’s Fair Play Committee of One. A camp-wide meeting is held to protest the drafting of young men.                 

February 16, 1944.  President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9423 transferring the WRA authority to the Department of the Interior, under Harold Ickes.

March 1944. Kiyoshi Okamoto and Isamu Horino are “deported” out of Heart Mountain to Tule Lake segregation center in an attempt to break up the resistance to the draft movement.

May 10, 1944. A Federal grand jury issues indictments against 63 Heart Mountain draft resisters. The 63 are found guilty and sentenced to jail terms on June 26th. They are among the 315 men who refused induction. 269 receive jail sentences. In 1947, President Harry Truman grants pardons to all.

1944. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team joins with the 100th Infantry Battalion and fights heroically in Europe, in Italy, France and Germany.

July 1, 1944. President Roosevelt signs Public Law 405, the so-called “denaturalization bill.” This bill allows native-born United States citizens to renounce their citizenship in time of war. Over 5,000 take this step.

July 2, 1944. Yaozo Hitomi, manager of the Tule Lake Co-op Store who is considered pro-administration, is murdered. This crime is never solved.

July 10, 1944. After weeks of effort, Northern California ACLU director Ernest Besig is allowed to go to Tule to investigate the stockade situation. Besig and another ACLU attorney Wayne Collins, pressure the government to shut down the stockade and release all the inmates. Over 300 were held in the stockade over the one year period of its existence.

July 21, 1944. 7 members of the Heart Mountain Fair Play committee and Denver journalist James Omura are arrested and tried for “unlawful conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet violators of the draft.” All but Omura, who is acquitted, are convicted.

October 27-30, 1944. The 442nd rescues another battalion (mainly composed of men from Texas) in the forests of Germany. This act is labeled the rescue of the Lost Battalion.

November 12, 1944. Of the 2,943 men of the 442nd who entered the Vosges Mountains, 161 died, 43 are missing, and 2,000 wounded, 882 seriously.

December 18, 1944. The Supreme Court rules on Korematsu and Endo cases. In Korematsu, the court upholds the constitutionality of the exclusion order, thus justifying the incarceration. In Endo, the court finds that the government cannot detain concededly loyal persons against their will. Though it effectively throws open the doors of the camps, the Endo decision does not address the constitutionality of the mass removal and detention of Japanese Americans.

December 27, 1944. Renunciants and Issei leaders involved in pro-Japan demonstrations at Tule Lake begin to be transferred to Justice Department administered internment camps. Other groups follow on January 26, February 11 and March 4, 1945, totalling 1516 men. They are moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and Fort Lincoln, North Dakota.


1945     
 
January 2, 1945. Japanese Americans are allowed to return to the West Coast, though restrictions remain. 30 incidents of harassment and terrorism are perpetrated against returnees.

May 7, 1945. The surrender of Germany ends the European war.

August 6, 1945. The atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Another is dropped on Nagasaki.

August 14, 1945. Japan surrenders, ending the war. 9 of the 10 camps are closed down during the year.

November 13, 1945. Attorney Wayne Collins files 2 mass petitions for 987 renunciants from Tule Lake in the U.S. District Court, San Francisco. Although most succeed in retaining their citizenship, the process drags on until 1969. Most of the renunciants regain American citizenship.



1946 and on.

March 20, 1946. Tule Lake closes, culminating in an incredible mass evacuation in reverse. In the month prior to the closing, some 5,000 internees had to be forcibly moved, with many elderly, impoverished, or mentally ill people who had no place to go. Of the 554 persons left there at the beginning of the day, 450 are moved to Crystal City, Texas, a DoJ camp, 60 are released, and the rest are “relocated”.

1946. Over 7100 Japanese Americans are sent to Japan. Some are repatriates, some are renunciants. Many are underage children.

July 15, 1946. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team is received on the White House lawn by President Harry Truman who said “You  fought not only the enemy but you fought prejudice – and you have won.”

June 30, 1947. U.S. District Judge Louis E. Goodman orders 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. 302 persons are finally released from Crystal City, Texas and Seabrook Farms, New Jersey, on September 6, 1947.

July 2, 1948. President Truman signs the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, a measure to compensate Japanese Americans for certain economic losses attributable to their forced incarceration. $38 million was paid over time, a small fraction of the true losses.

1948.  California Supreme Court rules that anti-miscegination laws are unconstitutional.

1952.  Issei are finally allowed naturalization.  Alien land laws are overturned.

July 10, 1970. A resolution, "A Requital Supplication", championed by Edison Uno, is adopted by the JACL Northern California-Western Nevada District Council calling for reparations for the World War II incarceration. It asks for individual compensation.

November 28, 1979. Representative Mike Lowry of Washington State introduces the first redress bill into Congress. It proposes direct payments of $15,000 per internee plus $15 per day of incarceration. Congress supports the JACL study commission bill introduced 2 months earlier.

July 14, 1981. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) holds a public hearing in Washington D.C. as part of its investigation of Japanese Americans during World War II. Similar hearings are held in other cities during 1981. The emotional testimony by Japanese Americans about their experiences would prove cathartic for the community. 750 testify. The last hearing takes place at Harvard University on December 9, 1981.

1983-1988. Based on evidence discovered by Prof. Peter Irons, the cases of Hirabayashi, Korematsu and Yasui are reopened in California, Oregon and Washington courts. All 3 previous convictions are vacated by the U.S. courts.

August 10, 1988. President Ronald Reagan signs the redress bill, H.R. 442, providing for individual payments of $20,000 to each surviving internee and a $50 million education fund, along with a letter of apology.

October 9, 1990. The first redress payments are made at a Washington D.C. ceremony. 107-year-old Rev. Mamoru Eto of Los Angeles is the first to receive a check. Only $5 million of the legislated $50 million are allocated for educational purposes.