California Plans to Apologize to Japanese-Americans Over Internment

Nearly 80 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the military to move thousands of Japanese-Americans into internment camps, California plans to formally apologize for its role in their detention.

The resolution, introduced by State Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi on Jan. 28, is expected to receive broad support this week from the rest of the Assembly. While many welcomed the measure, the latest step in the United States’ long reckoning with its imprisonment of American citizens during World War II, some Japanese-Americans said it was far overdue.

The resolution said the California Legislature “apologizes to all Americans of Japanese ancestry for its past actions in support of the unjust inclusion, removal, and incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and for its failure to support and defend the civil rights and civil liberties of Japanese-Americans during this period.”

The resolution also states that “given recent national events, it is all the more important to learn from the mistakes of the past and to ensure that such an assault on freedom will never again happen to any community in the United States.”