Reflecting on the Presidential Order that Sent Japanese Americans to Incarceration Camps

52:39

Mina Kim

Feb 17, 2017 at

Save Article

Failed to save article

Please try again

Evacuees of Japanese descent carry their personal effects preparatory to setting up housekeeping at Manzanar Relocation Center in Manzanar, California. (Photo: Clem Albers/U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

This Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The order forcibly removed approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes and sent them to live in prison-like camps. Here in the Bay Area, flower growers in Richmond, sweet shop owners in San Francisco’s Little Tokyo and others were packed into Greyhound buses and sent to assembly centers like Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, where they lived inside horse stalls before being moved to camps in the desert. We reflect on the legacy of that presidential order in the Bay Area and discuss its significance today.

The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement: A Digital Archive (Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

Guests:

Ken Kokka, filmmaker, "Blossoms and Thorns"; his parents and grandparents were all interned during WWII

Karen Korematsu, founder & executive director, The Fred T. Korematsu Institute; her late father was a civil rights activist convicted for refusing to go to an interment camp

Emiko Omori, filmmaker, "Rabbit in the Moon"; was sent to the Poston camp with her family when she was a child

Theresa Salazar, curator of Western Americana at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

Sponsored

lower waypoint

next waypoint

Death Doula Alua Arthur on How and Why to Prepare for the End How to Create Your Own ‘Garden Wonderland’First Trump Criminal Trial Underway in New York The Beauty in Finding ‘Other People’s Words’ in Your Own What the 99 Cents Only Stores Closure Means to Californians Bay Area Diaspora Closely Watching India’s Upcoming Election are u addicted to ur phone José Vadi’s “Chipped” Looks at Life from a Skateboarder’s Lens ‘The Notorious PhD’ on How Hip Hop Made America San Francisco Voters Face a Crowded and Contentious Mayor’s Race