Children in an internment camp
Reagan signs the bill
A 1993 letter from Bill Clinton (by then President) to affected families & a 1990 letter from then President George H.W, Bush which accompanied the payments.
August 10th 1988: Reparations for Japanese-Americans
On this day in 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 into law, apologising and providing reparations to Japanese-Americans who were interned in camps during the Second World War. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which prompted the United States to join World War Two on the Allied side, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order allowing the military to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps. The order withstood a Supreme Court challenge, and ultimately nearly 120,000 people were held in such camps. Those imprisoned suffered great material and personal losses, with most losing property and some losing their lives to illness or the violence of sentries. There were frequent calls for reparations for this crime against people of Japanese descent, and in 1988 the government officially apologised and provided for $20,000 in compensation for each survivor, with payments beginning in 1990. The 1988 Civil Liberties Act bill received primarily Democratic votes, with many Republican members of Congress voting against it.
“The Congress recognizes that…a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II”
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