The Evacuation of Japanese-Americans from Washington State During World War II: A Study in Race Discrimination

In 1964 Congress passed a major civil rights bill designed to give equal rights to all Americans regardless of race, but there was a time when that same government under pressures of war, denied civil rights to citizens as well as non-citizens strictly because of race. Going back twenty-three years, one can study the racial discrimination practiced by the United States government towards another minority group--the Japanese-Americans. This paper will cover: (1) Why the Japanese-Americans were evacuated during World War II; (2) How they were evacuated; (3) The consequences of their evacuation. Because of the vast program of relocation of all the Japanese-Americans on the Pacific Coast, this study will be limited to the 14,565 Japanese-Americans of Washington State