Nisei

Japanese American internment: dispossession

Nisei, (Japanese: “second-generation”), son or daughter of Japanese immigrants who was born and educated in the United States. During World War II all persons of Japanese ancestry on the U.S. West Coast were forcibly evacuated from their homes and relocated in inland detention centres as a result of mass hysteria following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). The U.S. government claimed that it was forced by public hysteria, agitation by the press and radio, and military pressure to establish the War Relocation Authority by executive order (March 18, 1942), and this agency administered the mass evacuation mandated by Executive Order 9066.

Under the jurisdiction of the Western Defense Command, 110,000 Japanese Americans (including a number who were still aliens) during the spring and summer of 1942 were placed in 10 wartime relocation centres located in isolated areas from the Sierra Nevada to the Mississippi River. The sparsely furnished military barracks in these camps afforded meagre “work opportunities” for adults and a minimal education for children. By the time the evacuation was complete, U.S. forces were largely in command of the Pacific and all danger of a possible Japanese invasion had passed. After individual screening at the centres to prove their loyalty, 17,600 Nisei were accepted for service in the U.S. armed forces; many of their units were later cited for bravery.

Demands for redress for the losses and injury suffered by the evacuees during the war were met in 1988 when the U.S. government apologized for the internments and passed legislation providing partial monetary payments to the approximately 60,000 surviving Japanese Americans who had been interned.