Japanese American Internment - Historical Context

Historical Context

See also: Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States

In the first half of the 20th century, California experienced a wave of anti-Japanese prejudice, in part because of the concentration of new immigrants. This was distinct from the Japanese American experience in the broader United States. Over 90% of Japanese immigrants to the USA settled in California, where labor and farm competition fed into general anti-Japanese sentiment. In 1905, California's anti-miscegenation law outlawed marriages between Caucasians and "Mongolians", an umbrella term that was used to refer to the Japanese and other ethnicities of East Asian ancestry. In October 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education separated Japanese students from Caucasian students. It ordered 93 Japanese students in the district to attend a segregated school in Chinatown. Twenty-five of the students were American citizens. In 1924, the "Oriental Exclusion Law" eliminated all Japanese immigration. Japanese immigrants had already been unable to attain citizenship by naturalization.

In 1939 through 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiled the Custodial Detention Index (CDI) on citizens, enemy aliens and foreign nationals, citing national security. On June 28, 1940, the Alien Registration Act was passed. Among many other loyalty regulations, Section 31 required the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens older than 14, and Section 35 required aliens to report any change of address within five days. In the subsequent months, nearly five million foreign nationals registered at post offices around the country.

Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were nisei (literal translation: "second generation"; Japanese people born in the United States and holding American citizenship) and sansei (literal translation: "third generation"; the sons or daughters of nisei). The rest were issei (literal translation: "first generation"; immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship).