The California Assembly voted unanimously on Thursday to formally apologize for the part the state played in the incarceration of Japanese Americans in U.S. government internment camps during World War II.
The state legislature passed the resolution nearly 80 years after President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the military to move thousands of Japanese Americans into the camps due to their perceived threat to national security.
(Manzanar internment camp site in 1943)
[Photo courtey of the Library of Congress]
Roosevelt's decision came soon after Japan launched its surprise attack on the U.S. military in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, leading the United States to enter the conflict and declare war against the Nazi Germany-aligned Empire of Japan.
The resolution said the assembly "apologizes to all Americans of Japanese ancestry for its past actions in support of the unjust exclusion, removal, and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and for its failure to support and defend the civil rights and civil liberties of Japanese Americans during this period."
Anti-Japanese sentiment began to surface in the West Coast state as early as 1913 when the California Alien Land Law was passed to target Japanese farmers who were considered a threat to the established agricultural industry.
Later, federal and state laws were passed which discriminated against people of Japanese descent and led to the rounding up and transfer of about 120,000 Japanese Americans into 10 camps.
"During the years leading up to World War II, California led the nation in fanning the flames of racism," Al Muratsuchi, an assembly member who introduced the resolution, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which said the order to relocate Japanese Americans was sparked by "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership."
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