Contextualizing Japanese American Incarceration
This timeline covers significant events that led to the incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese descent. Long before World War II, the United States enacted laws and other measures to restrict Japanese and other Asian immigrants access to citizenship. Contextualizing the Japanese American incarceration within this long history of racism allows us to understand how it was allowed to happen.
This map illustrates the location of the ten incarceration or concentration camps created between 1942-1946 under Executive Order 9066 as well as the 15 "assembly centers" created to house people of Japanese ancestry while the camps were still being built. On February 19, Executive Order 9066 authorized the "evacuation" and "relocation" of all individuals of Japanese descent in what was designated as Military Zone 1 and 2. This included the entire west coast of the United States from Washington State to California.
