“I thought what the military was doing was unconstitutional. I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I’m an American.” – Fred T. Korematsu

This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Gerald Ford rescinding Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1976, officially closing the chapter on one of the darkest moments in modern American civil liberties. However, it could not erase the memories of 125,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, taken from their homes and incarcerated in camps around the country. It could not undo the damage to family livelihoods, stunted careers, destroyed communities, and lives lost resulting from the enactment of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.

While the exclusion orders that called for the removal and incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans were lifted two and a half years later in December 1944, the impact of the loss was felt for decades and generations. Business had been sold at a loss, homes lost, agricultural land lay fallow or was taken over, and Japantowns and communities were irreparably broken. At the end of the Incarceration and at the end of the war, many who were incarcerated were unable to reclaim the lives they lived on February 18, 1942. 

The history of the Japanese American Incarceration is important. It is not just about the Japanese American experience. Woven together with the 125,000 stories of individuals sent to camps in often desolate spots around the country are the broader issues of the right to due process in the Fifth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the civil liberties guaranteed to every American citizen. These stories are as important as the impact of “manifest destiny” on Native American and indigenous peoples of the United States, and slavery and Jim Crow. They are all part of our American story and should not be erased from our history books. 

As a national education advocacy organization, the Fred T. Korematsu Institute believes the fight for justice, racial equity, and human rights begins with education. There has traditionally been no place more important than the public education classroom for sharing the truths, histories, and voices of all of people. And the best way we can prevent the repetition of this dark moment in our history is to remember and learn from it. President Gerald Ford, rescinding Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1976, did not reverse the effects of the Incarceration. And as the surviving number of those incarcerated during WWII dwindles, we cannot let this history be rewritten, lost, or erased. This is about all of us. On this Day of Remembrance, let us all commit to working together to educate against ignorance and xenophobia for a future we can all be proud to share.