SF's Japantown Holds Day of Remembrance
San Francisco's Japantown commemorated the Day of Remembrance on Monday, marking the anniversary of the executive order that led to the forced internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Speakers at the annual event highlighted the need to preserve this history to prevent future violations of civil liberties. The commemoration serves as a call for vigilance against prejudice.
- The forced removal was authorized by Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, which led to the incarceration of about 125,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were American citizens. - Before being sent to permanent camps, around 8,000 Japanese Americans from the Bay Area were first held at the Tanforan Assembly Center, a converted horse racetrack in San Bruno. Many San Francisco residents were later incarcerated at the Topaz camp in Utah. - San Francisco's Japantown is one of only three remaining Japantowns in the United States today; prior to World War II, there were more than 40 in California alone. - The original Japantown in San Francisco was located in the South of Market area but was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, prompting the community to relocate to its current location in the Western Addition. - In addition to the wartime incarceration, the Japantown community was further displaced by large-scale urban renewal projects in the 1960s, which razed about half of the neighborhood's core. - Decades of activism by groups like the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Signed by President Ronald Reagan, the act issued a formal apology and provided $20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee. - Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American man from the Bay Area, challenged the legality of the exclusion orders, but his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1944 case *Korematsu v. United States*, which argued it was a "military necessity." - The annual Day of Remembrance in San Francisco often includes a candlelight procession to honor those who were incarcerated and to highlight the ongoing relevance of protecting civil liberties.
