During WWII, one country imprisoned 120,000 innocent people in concentration camps. That country was the United States of America.
March 24, 1942: Civilian Exclusion Orders
On March 24, 1942, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1 was issued by General John L. DeWitt under the authority of Executive Order 9066. It was the first of 108 exclusion orders that would systematically remove every Japanese American from the West Coast — without trial, without charges, without due process.
This first order targeted Bainbridge Island, Washington — a small, tight-knit community of 276 Japanese Americans. They were given just six days to pack up their lives and report to the ferry terminal. Six days to abandon their homes, businesses, schools, farms, and possessions. Most brought only what they could carry.
From Bainbridge Island, they were sent first to the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, one of ten concentration camps hastily built across desolate parts of the U.S. surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.
Many of these families had been in the U.S. for generations. Two-thirds of those incarcerated were American-born citizens.
They were not accused of any crime.
Their only offense: being of Japanese ancestry.
This was not a single act, but the beginning of a calculated campaign of forced removal and incarceration. In the coming months, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans — from California, Oregon, and Washington — would be removed from their homes and herded into temporary “assembly centers” before being sent to isolated prison camps across the country.
Imagine being told you had six days to leave everything behind.
Your house. Your business. Your dog. Your neighbors. Your memories.
Imagine that this happened not in some distant land, but in the United States of America — under the banner of “national security.”
America would not formally apologize until 1988 — nearly half a century later.
Should it have come sooner?
What lessons have we learned?
And who will we remember?
