207: Japanese Internment: Removal, Relocation, & Reckoning

About this episode

This episode discusses the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, highlighting the legal and constitutional challenges faced by those affected.

"What I vividly recall is after getting to Tanforan and walking into this horse stable, and Mom… putting down her suitcase and just crying.” This is the story of Japanese American incarceration. In February 1942, shortly after the United States enters the war, FDR signs Executive Order 9066, beginning the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes and lives. Some 120,000 civilians—many of them American citizens, none of them charged with a crime—are sent to camps across the American West and South. Their constitutional rights are denied in the name of national security. Even as families struggle to carry on inside the barbed wire, legal challenges arise. Three Japanese Americans fight their way to the Supreme Court, forcing the nation’s highest court to confront a question it would rather avoid: can the Constitution be suspended for an entire ethnic group in wartime? And when the court finally rules—does the answer change anything at all? ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and preorder Prof. Jackson’s new book go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS…

People in this episode

Host: Prof. Greg Jackson

Topics covered

• Japanese American internment
• World War II
• civil rights
• legal challenges
• national security
• Supreme Court cases

Keywords

• Japanese internment
• FDR
• Executive Order 9066
• Supreme Court
• civil liberties
• national security
• barbed wire camps
• ethnic group rights

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Supreme Court

Books & works: Executive Order 9066

Places: United States, Tanforan

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