CALIFORNIA BRIEF HISTORY 

The Japanese in California

Japanese workers had begun immigrating to California in the 1890s and experienced racial discrimination, as had the Chinese before them. In 1906 the San Francisco Board of Education announced that Japanese students would have to attend a Chinese school, which was renamed the Oriental School. President Theodore Roosevelt arranged to have the policy rescinded in exchange for Japanese limits on immigration to the United States. In 1924 Asian immigration was shut off entirely.

California Internment Camps

As World War II approached, anti-Japanese feelings increased further. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, public groups in California argued that the Japanese should be removed from the state. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the removal of 112,000 Californians of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, to internment camps in the interior of the United States. After the war, although they were allowed to return, a large number settled in other areas. In 1988 the Congress of the United States passed a bill to compensate those who had been detained.