March 18, 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority (WRA) while ordering it “to provide for the removal from designated areas of persons whose removal is necessary in the interests of national security.” Racism and xenophobia led to the framing of Japanese Americans and other targeted groups as enemies of the United States. Executive Order 9102 also put these displaced people to work as an incarcerated contract labor force. Such labor goals also directly impacted chosen locations for the camps themselves. As historian Stephanie Hinnershitz emphasizes, “WRA administrators and the Army Corps of Engineers placed the potential for labor projects for Japanese Americans at the top of their list of specific requirements for a site to be considered for hosting a camp.” She also stresses the public relations campaign that sought to portray this incarcerated labor as voluntary to maintain civilian support for the forced displacement program. Bringing these points together, she sharply summarizes that “War, racism, and labor shortages led to the creation of a new exploitable source of labor.”
Recommended reading to learn more:
Citations: Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Executive Order 9102-Establishing the War Relocation Authority in the Executive Office of the President and Defining Its Functions and Duties,” March 18, 1942, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-9102-establishing-the-war-relocation-authority-the-executive-office-the; Stephanie Hinnershitz, Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor During World War II (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), 32, 73, Kindle edition; Clem Albers, “Japanese relocation, California,” photograph (Salinas, CA, April-July 1942), https://lccn.loc.gov/2017699963.
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