Unsung History12 Jun 2023

The Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II & the Role of Attorneys at the Relocation Centers

During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were US citizens, were forcibly removed from their homes in California, Washington, and Oregon, and imprisoned in relocation centers, small towns surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. The War Relocation Authority, the government agency created by FDR that oversaw the mass relocation and internment, appointed a project attorney for each of the 10 camps. These white attorneys served the conflicted position of both advising the project director and running a legal aid for the Japanese American prisoners.

Joining me in this episode is legal historian Eric L. Muller, the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina School of Law and author of Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe: Complicity and Conscience in America's World War II Concentration Camps.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Longing for Japan,” by srento, licensed for use via Pond5. The episode image is “Lone Pine, Calif. Apr. 1942. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry arriving by train and awaiting buses for Manzanar, a War Relocation Authority center,” by Clem Albers, from April 1, 1942; the photograph is housed in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-73157), with no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

“Japanese American Incarceration During World War II,” DocsTeach, Created by the National Archives.
“FDR sets up War Relocation Authority , March 18, 1942,” by Andrew Glass, Politico, March 18, 2018.
“How Japanese American Incarceration Was Entangled With Indigenous Dispossession,” by Hana Maruyama, KCET, August 18, 2022.
“The Injustice of Japanese-American Internment Camps Resonates Strongly to This Day,” by T. A. Frail, Smithsonian Magazine, January 2017.
“She fought the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and won,” by Lori Aratani, The Washington Post, December 18, 2019.
“The dangerous economics of racial resentment during World War II,” by Gwynn Guilford, Quartz, February 13, 2018.
“Before people start invoking Japanese American internment, they should remember what it was like,” by Jeff Guo, The Washington Post, November 18, 2015.
“Bitter Harvest,” by A. V. Krebs, The Washington Post, February 2, 1992.

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