Hysteria

"Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Courtesy of Getty Images

Immediately after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese Americans were labeled as aliens and traitors by inflammatory media campaigns.

"The absence of any sabotage by Japanese Americans is an indication that the blow is well-organized and that it is held back until it can be struck with maximum effect."

- Walter Lippman, columnist, 1942

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Courtesy of the University of Missouri

Courtesy of the National Archives

"I vividly remember wartime propaganda posters and newsreel accounts about the ‘sneaky, treacherous, rapacious, yellow-bellied Japs’ who were the enemy. Nobody in the Government made a distinction between the “Japs” of the Japanese Imperial Army and me. I was one of the enemy [at] 10 years old."

- Robert Moteki

Following this wave of hysteria, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, forcing approximately 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent to abandon their livelihoods and relocate to prison-like internment camps. Japanese Americans were now officially declared as threats to national security.

"Machinery for eventual exclusion of all enemy aliens and all persons of Japanese ancestry from huge 'strategic areas'...was set up by military authorities yesterday...embracing all of California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona…"

- San Francisco Examiner, 1942

Posting of Japanese Exclusion Order, courtesy of University of Washington Press

"Disposition of Japanese property in Seattle going well…Some Japanese stores have been liquidated, some sold outright, and some leased."

- Seattle Mayor Earl Millikin's telegram to Congressman John H. Tolan, 1942

Abandoned Japanese Businesses, Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives (right), Courtesy of University of Washington Libraries (left)

"Henry went to the Control Station to register the family. He came home with twenty tags, all numbered "10710," tags to be attached to each piece of baggage, and one to hang from our coat lapels. From then on, we were known as Family #10710."

- Monica Sone

Registration of Japanese Americans, courtesy of Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection

"Every day there was something else about other people being taken by the FBI...It [was] a situation where the whole community would be uprooted...after a while we became aware that maybe things weren't going to just stop but would continue to get worse and worse."

- Mary Tsukamoto

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