Japanese American Citizens League - Redress For Internment

Redress For Internment

In 1970, at its biennial convention in Chicago, the JACL passed a resolution calling for recognition of, and reparations for, the injustice of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. It formalized the debate as a priority within the organization despite the Japanese American community's tepid response to the issue. In 1978, the JACL launched a campaign to seek redress from the U.S. government for the imprisonment and loss of freedom of Japanese Americans during World War II. The JACL was determined to seek some measure of legislative guarantee that the violation of constitutional rights visited upon Japanese Americans would never again be brought upon any group in the United States.

Within two years of launching the campaign, a JACL-sponsored legislation to create a federal investigative commission was approved by the Congress and signed by President Jimmy Carter. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was established to investigate the circumstances surrounding the World War II internment and provide its findings to the Congress and the president. The commission's report in 1982 found that the government's actions were unjustified and unconstitutional, and based on this substantiation of its claims and on the commission's recommendations for monetary redress, the JACL sought legislation calling for monetary redress and a presidential apology.

The redress campaign culminated with the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided monetary compensation and a formal apology to the victims of the World War II internment. After ten years of campaigning in Washington D.C. and across the country through its chapters' grassroots efforts, the JACL brought to a close a final episode in one of the darkest chapters in the constitutional history of the nation.