Personal Justice Denied Report

Personal Justice Denied tells the extraordinary story of the incarceration of mainland Japanese Americans and Alaskan Aleuts during World War II. Although this wartime episode is now almost universally recognized as a catastrophe, for decades various government officials and agencies defended their actions by asserting a military necessity. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment was established by act of Congress in 1980 to investigate the detention program. Over twenty days, it held hearings in cities across the country, particularly on the West Coast, with testimony from more than 750 witnesses: evacuees, former government officials, public figures, interested citizens, and historians and other professionals. It took steps to locate and to review the records of government action and to analyze contemporary writings and personal and historical accounts. The Commission’s report is a masterful summary of events surrounding the wartime relocation and detention activities, and a strong indictment of the policies that led to them. The report and its recommendations were instrumental in effecting a presidential apology and monetary restitution to surviving Japanese Americans and members of the Aleut community.

Part II (p.315-359) concerns the removal of Aleuts to camps in southeastern Alaska and their subsequent resettlement at war's end.

Part II (p.315-359) concerns the removal of Aleuts to camps in southeastern Alaska and their subsequent resettlement at war's end.

The report and its recommendations were instrumental in effecting a presidential apology and monetary restitution to surviving Japanese Americans and members of the Aleut community.

This is the complete official version of the Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied, issued in December 1982, along with the Commission's recommendations, issued in June 1983. The Commission studied the causes and consequences of the relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. The Commission recommended the establishment of a fund to compensate the relocated individuals; President Reagan would later sign such a bill into law. The Commission found: This policy of exclusion, removal and detention was executed against 120,000 people without individual review, and exclusion was continued virtually without regard for their demonstrated loyalty to the United States. Congress was fully aware of and supported the policy of removal and detention; it sanctioned the exclusion by enacting a statute which made criminal the violation of orders issued pursuant to Executive Order 9066. The United States Supreme Court held the exclusion constitutionally permissible in the context of war, but struck down the incarceration of admittedly loyal American citizens on the ground that it was not based on statutory authority. All this was done despite the fact that not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast. No mass exclusion or detention, in any part of the country, was ordered against American citizens of German or Italian descent. Official actions against enemy aliens of other nationalities were much more individualized and selective than those imposed on the ethnic Japanese. The history of the relocation camps and the assembly centers that preceded them is one of suffering and deprivation visited on people against whom no charges were, or could have been, brought. The Commission hearing record is full of poignant, searing testimony that recounts the economic and personal losses and injury caused by the exclusion and the deprivations of detention. No summary can do this testimony justice.