Before Japan and America went to war, some Japanese expatriates had been evacuated, but people of Japanese descent who had become American citizens remained in America.
After the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing "military areas" along the West Coast. All people of Japanese descent within the restricted zones were to be relocated to inland "relocation centers."
Theoretically, they were not like concentration camps.
At the time, ninety percent of people of Japanese descent lived on the West Coast, including seventy thousand citizens born in America.
Although they claimed loyalty to America, the "locals" remained hostile toward them. Even the president worried that they might engage in sabotage and espionage.
To prevent these Japanese Americans who believed in The Mikado from sabotaging or spying on America's military and vital industries, the military was tasked with expelling Japanese Americans from areas near important military facilities.
Like Jewish settlements, these inland "military areas" imposed curfews, though conditions were far better than those endured by Jews in Warsaw. More importantly, the Japanese Americans inside were being protected in a roundabout way. Japanese Americans outside the restricted areas instead had to worry about attacks from colleagues, neighbors, and even the newsboys who delivered their papers.
Japanese Americans in California, Washington, and New Orleans immediately set off for relocation camps in Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. However, one Japanese American living in San Leandro, California, Saburo Matsutoyo, refused to obey the order.
He was then arrested.
Saburo Matsutoyo appealed to the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the exclusion and relocation orders—whether the military's temporary removal of a specific group of people constituted racial discrimination.
During the investigation into the enforcement of the exclusion order, some Japanese Americans confirmed their allegiance to Japan. Some refused to