EO 9066 day of remembrance 2026
okagesamade 🙏🏼 in the shadow of those who came before us all things are possible.
today the nikkei community marks the 84th anniversary of the presidential executive order that created the japanese american concentration camps via the establishment of the War Relocation Authority, or WRA, and the military exclusion zone.
1/3rd of incarcerees were children. orphanages were swept for any children that might have japanese features, and regardless of where they came from, all orphans were sent to manzanar in southern california. we don’t have good records of where they went after that.
2/3rds of incarcerees were US citizens by birth (there was no naturalization process for asian people at that time).
the fbi started abducting nikkei people whom they had identified as key community figures via extensive surveillance about 24 hours after the pearl harbor attacks. they were very likely subject to torture, as were those men imprisoned for resisting the army draft.
the land grab of nikkei farms with fully mature crops and fruit trees on them allowed west coast agricultural companies to profiteer off war time food prices using our expertise and labor. crops that were grown exclusively by nikkei farmers before the war quadrupled in price once they were being sold by corporations. we were forced to grow a lot of our own food for the camps and the army requisitioned what they wanted from our supplies because we were growing 40% of california’s net produce and they couldn’t afford to lose us from the labor market. we were also forced to manufacture goods for the military in the camps, like making camo netting.
a lot of the land that used to make up the camps is privately owned now. there is a private air field in tule lake, california with over 300 of our dead buried there, and that’s just the camp where my family was imprisoned.
there were nikkei who were US citizens who were deported out of the incarceration camps and left to fend for themselves in a war torn japan where 1/5th of the population was homeless and starving. some of them made it back on their own. some of them did not.
we mark these things today because they are repeating. “never again” means right the fuck now.
FUCK ICE. fuck the empire. this is what it does, generation after generation. DON’T FORGET. the only way to keep our neighbors safe is to keep them out of ICE custody in the first place.
if you would like further resources about the nikkei mass incarceration, please look up denshō, the japanese american national museum (JANM), george takei’s graphic novel “they called us enemy,” or videos like this one
