Japanese American internment from 1942-1946

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Historical Dates of the Japanese American Internment.

• 1940: Alien Registration Act declared that there was no specific distinction between Koreans and Japanese. According to Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore, the Act “classified Korean immigrants as subjects of Japan; after the United States declared war against Japan, the government identified Koreans here as “enemy aliens.” 2
  
• November 7, 1941: Munson Report: President Franklin Roosevelt secretly requested an investigation of the possibility of an insurrection from the Japanese Americans. The demand was given to Curtis Munson to investigate the concern. Takaki explained that Munson’s research discovered such a threat was highly unlikely.
  • “There will not be an armed uprising of Japanese [in this country]…Japan will commit some sabotage largely depending on imported Japanese as they are afraid of and do not trust the Nisei. There will be no wholehearted response from Japanese in the United States… For the most part the local Japanese are loyal to the United States or, at worst, hope that by remaining quiet they believe that they would be at least any more disloyal than any other racial group in the United States with whom we went to war.” 3
    
• December 7, 1942: Attack on Pearl Harbor

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2. Takaki, Ronald. A History of Asian Americans: Strangers from a Different Shore,      Boston : Back Bay Books. 1998.

3. Ibid., 386.