Seventy-five years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration of Japanese-Americans with Executive Order 9066. This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire West Coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona. Nearly 130,000 mainland Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942. No civilians were found to be agents of espionage.
There has been a spike in hate speech since the November elections, which has liberated people to say in public what was not acceptable before the campaign. [Read more…]