Japanese Americans Affected by Internment, 1942. GIS-generated Map

Description:

In 1942, the U.S. government evacuated all persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast and incarcerated them in War Relocation Authority (WRA) relocation centers. Approximately 110,000 people were interned, 65% of them American citizens and the remaining 35%, Japan-born resident aliens. The internees constituted 87% of the Japanese population in the continental United States and 97% of the Japanese population in the West Coast enumerated in the 1940 Census. At the same time, only 1% of Japanese Americans in Hawaii and the rest of the U.S. were interned. Many have speculated about reasons for such disparate policies toward the Japanese. If, as officially claimed, evacuation was a military necessity, Hawaiian Japanese Americans should have been evacuated ahead of West Coast Japanese Americans. Michev and Plambeck based this map on data found in Aimee Chin’s article, “Long‐Run Labor Market Effects of Japanese American Internment during World War II on Working‐Age Male Internees” (Journal of Labor Economics).

Attribution:

Boris Michev and Johannes Plambeck

Date:

2013