President Truman Signs Japanese-American Claims Act
President Harry Truman on this day signed into law the Japanese-American Claims Act to provide relief for the victims of the Japanese-American evacuation and internment during World war II. About 119,000 people of Japanese descent, 2/3 of whom were American citizens, were evacuated and interned.
The Japanese-American Claims Act, together with the 1988 Civil Liberties Act are two of only 5 or 6 efforts to provide reparations to the victims of constitutional and human rights violations by federal, state or local governments in American history.
On August 10, 2009, the Illinois legislature created the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) to provide financial compensation to individuals who suffered torture at the hands of the Chicago police, in a unit led by the notorious Lt. Jon Burge. Many of the victims were forced to confess to crimes and were sentenced to prison.
The government eventually settled 23,000 separate claims by Japanese-Americans for a total of $38 million. The last case was settled in 1965.
The Japanese-American evacuation from the west coast was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. It is widely regarded as the greatest single civil liberties tragedy in American history.
Learn more about the Japanese-American Claims Act here.
Visit the Japanese-American Museum: http://www.janm.org/
Read: Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (2001)
Read a first-hand account of the evacuation and internment: Jeanne Wakatsuki Huston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (2002)
Learn more: Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Cases (1983)