How a Segregated Regiment of Japanese Americans Became One of WWII’s Most Decorated

The About-Face Permitting Japanese Americans to Enlist Provoked Dissent, Anger—and the Remarkable 442nd Regiment

In January 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his War Department abruptly reversed course by allowing Japanese Americans to enlist in the U.S. Army in the fight against Germany and Japan.

This was not a foregone conclusion: The draconian mass removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans had been justified as a military necessity—and continued to be enforced. Two-thirds of those incarcerated were American-born Nisei, second-generation citizens; one-third were Issei, Japan-born immigrants, prohibited by law from applying for naturalization.

In the event of an invasion by Japan, the argument …

By Franklin Odo | January 18, 2017

The Supreme Court Ruled Wrong, Then Right, on Japanese American Internment

The Only "Precedent” for the Proposed Muslim Registry Is Conflicted Legal Thinking

By Julian Lim | January 18, 2017

In 2014, a group of law students at the University of Hawaii asked Justice Antonin Scalia to comment on the Korematsu case, the infamous 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld …

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Act of Infamy Against Japanese Americans

How a Human Rights Champion Gave in to Racist Suspicion After Pearl Harbor

By Matthew Dallek | January 18, 2017

In recent months, president-elect Donald Trump has said he is considering setting up a registry to track Muslim Americans and foil jihadist plots from being hatched in the United States. …

Why I’m Still Talking About My Incarceration as an American Japanese

The Pain of Remembering Is Deep, But the Danger in Forgetting Is Far Worse

By Chizu Omori | January 18, 2017

I am a member of a once despised minority group, American Japanese, who spent three and a half years incarcerated in an American concentration camp during World War II. …

In the Wake of Pearl Harbor, a Secret Intel Report Could’ve Stopped the Internment Camps

The Tale of a Daring Night Raid That Vindicated Japanese Americans

By Andrea Pitzer | January 18, 2017

In spring 1941, months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a team led by U.S. Naval Intelligence officer Kenneth Ringle broke into the Japanese consulate in Los Angeles.

One man …

A Cultural Touchstone Fends off the End of an Era

In the Age of the Angry Asian Man Blog, 113-year-old Japanese-American Newspaper 'The Rafu Shimpo' Reaches Out to New Readers

By Gwen Muranaka | May 13, 2016

Long before I was the English editor of The Rafu Shimpo—the newspaper that covers Japanese-American communities up and down the Pacific Coast and other Japanese-American hubs like Denver, New York, …

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