Munson Report
A month before Pearl Harbor, the Munson Report told Roosevelt that Japanese Americans largely posed no security risk. Here’s how it was sidelined.
Wartime Incarceration
Masumi Mitsui
Masumi Mitsui fought for Canada in World War I and earned the Military Medal. In 1942, Canada labeled him an “enemy alien,” seized his family’s farm, and forced them from their home.
World Quaker Day
On World Quaker Day, remember how Quakers stood with Japanese Americans in World War II, from storing belongings to helping 4,000 students leave the camps.
John Tateishi
Many people opposed Japanese American redress, including Japanese Americans. The story of John Tateishi and the decade-long fight for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
Heart Mountain War Relocation Center
Heart Mountain, Wyoming: the WRA camp that became a city of 10,700 Japanese Americans, chosen for being close to nowhere.
Santa Anita Riot
On August 4, 1942, a routine search for contraband at the Santa Anita Assembly Center escalated into a riot involving 2,000 Japanese American detainees.
Gila River War Relocation Center
Gila River was considered one of America’s least oppressive concentration camps. But even Eleanor Roosevelt left appalled after seeing it for herself.
Willie Ito
Inside an incarceration camp, a Sears catalog was Willie Ito’s sketchbook. Those childhood drawings at Topaz eventually led to Disney, Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and decades later, helped him tell the story of incarceration to a new generation through Hello, Maggie!