Primary Sources from UH Mānoa Library's Hawaiʻi Congressional Papers Collection
December 7, 1941: Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor: In a surprise strike against the U.S., the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service military attacked the U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor in Hawaiʻi on the morning of December 7, 1941. This attack became the rationale for the U.S. to enter World War II.
February 19, 1942: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066. This order authorized the federal removal of all persons perceived as threats to national security into detention centers on the U.S. West Coast. While the order did not specify persons of Japanese descent, it resulted in the mass incarceration of 122,000 Japanese Americans.
April 1942: The first ship Etolin carrying 141 Peruvian Japanese left Calllao, Peru. Etolin stopped to pick up Colombian Japanese before arriving in San Francisco. The Latin American Japanese were classified as enemy aliens and subsequently detained.
October 21, 1944: The last ship carrying Peruvian Japanese arrived in New Orleans. By this time, over 2,000 Latin American Japanese had been forcibly deported from their countries and incarcerated in the U.S.
August 2, 1979: Senator Inouye introduces S. 1647 in the Senate with the substantial support of fellow Senator Spark Matsunaga, to create the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate and determine whether any wrong was committed by the U.S. government against those American citizens and permanent resident aliens affected by Executive Order 9066. The CWRIC was signed into public law by President Jimmy Carter on July 31, 1980.
August 10, 1988: The Civil Liberties Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It was first introduced as H.R. 442 and the companion bill S. 1009 as the Civil Liberties Act of 1987. The act provided a formal presidential apology and $20,000 in redress to all the surviving U.S. citizens or legal resident immigrants of Japanese descent incarcerated in World War II.
1996: The Campaign for Justice was formed by former Latin Americans of Japanese descent internees and their families.
January 25, 1999: The Mochizuki v. The United States settlement resulted in the U.S. government agreeing to issue apology letters and compensation payments of $5,000 per surviving internees and/or survivors of internees of Japanese Latin Americans detained during World War II. Concerns were raised by Japanese Latin Americans about the lack of official government letterhead, the absence of the terms "Japanese" and "Latin American" in the apology, the disparity over reparations of $5,000 and $20,000 for Japanese Americans, and the prohibition of any future Latin American Japanese to bring forward claims to redress.
February 16, 2006: Senator Inouye introduced the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Latin Americans of Japanese Descent Act. Senator Inouye called for the necessity of a comprehensive investigation of the forced deportation and incarceration of Latin Americans of Japanese Descent.