Kiku spoke about her highly-regarded new book Displacement, and the lasting effects of Executive Order 9066 on the Japanese American community.

On Saturday, February 26, I attended an online talk with Kiku Hughes hosted by the Japanese American Citizens League (in collaboration with other organizations). Within days, they had all been removed from their homes on the coast, and transported to barren locations in the interior of California, Oregon and Washington, and sometimes even further east to camps in Nevada and Utah.Įvery February 19, the USA now acknowledges this unjust incarceration with a national Day of Remembrance, and various community organizations – especially on the west coast – schedule related events. And as soon as FDR signed it, Executive Order 9066 lead to the forcible incarceration of approximately 120,000 people with Japanese heritage. Since a large population of American citizens with Japanese heritage – including people who had been born in the USA as well as those who had completed the naturalization process – were known to reside on the west coast of the mainland, the American Army worked quickly to build rudimentary “relocation camps” for them. On Febru– barely two months after the government of Japan executed the military attack on Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) which brought the USA into World War II – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.

Kiku hughes