Executive Order 9066 -- Japanese internment

Trouble between the United States and Japan had been brewing for years, but the Japanese aerial attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 was the shock heard round the world.

It destroyed much of our naval fleet anchored in the harbor, killed and wounded more than 5,000 of our servicemen, and pulled us into World War II. Our Pacific Coast from Washington state to California was left vulnerable to attack by planes, warships and submarines in the critical months after the Pearl Harbor attack. Shore patrols were hastily organized by the Army and observation bunkers were built to watch for activity on the coast. The Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge were ordered to turn off all lights at night, and a large chain and steel net was strung across the Golden Gate channel from San Francisco to Marin County.

All shipping was admitted to the Bay only after the chain was swung back to form a passage for the ships. Cities formed patrols at night in case saboteurs landing on the beaches might head for vital municipal areas. Blackouts were declared for every city, with wardens enforcing the no-light law after dark. The fear of another attack by the Japanese was heightened by documentation of atrocities committed in their invasion of China.

It was in this atmosphere that Lt. Gen. J. L. DeWitt issued Executive Order 9066. President Franklin Roosevelt signed it Feb. 19, 1942. All persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were to be relocated to remote internment camps in the United States. At 1701 Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco, registration and physical exams began for the thousands of Japanese who were ordered to register before being assigned to the 10 relocation sites. More than 100,000 would ultimately be evacuated from the Pacific Coast military zone. Most of these were American citizens. They had only a short time to close their businesses, sell or just leave their homes, cars, furniture and other belongings, bringing with them only what they could carry.

At the outbreak of the war, all race tracks had been ordered closed. The Bay Meadows race track in San Mateo later re-opened and contributed much of its profit to the war effort. Tanforan, in San Bruno, 14 miles south from San Francisco, however, was headed in a direction it never imagined it would go. In April of 1942, the race track was deemed of sufficient size and had facilities to handle large crowds. These factors, along with a great number of barracks that could be utilized for living quarters made it a choice by the Army to be used as a temporary assembly center for the relocation of the thousands of Japanese from the Bay Area. Horse stalls surrounded the race track, and they were hurriedly altered to accommodate families. Interior roads at the track were not paved, and dirt and dust filtered into the stalls. The horse manure was cleaned out of each stall, and two rooms were created inside, with a window-less room in the back with only a bed and mattress supplied for each person. Immediately after arriving at Tanforan, the people began building shelves, chairs, tables and benches from scrap lumber for use in these two-room quarters. After the available horse stalls were assigned to families, 100-foot-long barracks, covered with black tar paper, were built, each containing several one-room quarters. The toilets were located a half-block away from the barracks, and they were open pit with no privacy available. Mess halls were constructed and the evacuees were assigned eating locations. Two shifts were set up as the facilities could not handle everyone at once. The people brought their own utensils and washed them themselves. By mid-June, 8,000 evacuees had assembled at Tanforan. There was nothing to do. Games and schools were organized for the children by the evacuees. The older people talked and walked around until it was time to line up again for a meal.

The War Relocation Authority had the task of finding 10 places in the western United States where the Japanese could be transferred from the temporary centers such as Tanforan. The first site was Manzanar, located in the Owens Valley near Independence, Calif. This camp would eventually have more than 800 buildings and hold 15,000 Japanese until it closed in 1945. Another internment camp was opened in Topaz, Utah, and most of the Tanforan Japanese were transferred there by October of 1942.

There is a small commemorative garden and plaque located at the western side of the Tanforan Shopping Center, just a bit south of the bronze statue of Seabiscuit. It was installed by former internees and others, and dedicated on Sept. 29, 2007. The garden consists of carefully placed rocks and boulders, stark and sturdy, symbolic of the stark surroundings of the internment camp and of the sturdy resilience of the Japanese-Americans confined there, guilty by reason of ancestry. Ironically, the most decorated military unit in World War II was the 442nd Regiment Combat Team consisting entirely of Japanese-Americans. It fought valiantly for the United States while their families lived behind barbed-wire back home. A terrible attack on Americans at Pearl Harbor and a terrible attack on American civil liberties. When did two wrongs ever make a right?