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- Title
A Shameful Legacy: Tracing the Japanese American Experience of Police Violence and Racism from the Late 19th Century Through the Aftermath of World War II.
- Authors
TAFOYA, MIRANDA
- Abstract
Law enforcement agencies are allegedly meant "to protect and serve" and yet there are numerous examples of state violence and brutality against citizens, especially because of racial profiling and racist stereotypes. One often ignored blight on American history is Executive Order 9066. Law enforcement agencies played an integral part in the round up of Japanese American families and the implementation of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's infamous wartime executive order. This paper argues that the actions of law enforcement in the lead-up to the forced removal of Japanese Americans, in the operation of the prison camps, and in the aftermath of Japanese Internment demonstrate how deeply rooted nativism coupled with wartime hysteria resulted in racialized violence against Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens. Law enforcement did not protect and serve Japanese Americans and this paper examines how this state violence is part of a shameful legacy that must be part of discussions about policing and race in America. Moreover, this paper shines a light on the policing of everyday life for Japanese Americans during this historical period. This project arises out of my family history. My great-great-grandfather, a leader in the San Francisco Japanese community, fought for his civil rights all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case against the San Francisco Sheriff in 1902. My grandmother was born after World War II, but her two older siblings, her parents, grandfather, and extended family were imprisoned at Topaz War Relocation Center in rural Utah. In this telling of my family's story, I offer a heretofore underexamined aspect of the criminalization of Japanese Americans' everyday life and the ways that government action and law enforcement controlled this community. I also subvert the dominant narrative of silence and shame about pre-war Japanese exclusion and Executive Order 9066 by turning this shame squarely onto the state to encourage accountability and aid future discussions of policing and race in America.
- Subjects
AMERICA; SAN Francisco (Calif.); JAPANESE Americans; RACIAL profiling in law enforcement; INTERNMENT of Japanese Americans, 1942-1945; PRISONERS of war; INSTITUTIONAL racism; WAR; POLICE brutality; NINETEENTH century
- Publication
California Legal History, 2023, Vol 18, p273
- ISSN
1930-4943
- Publication type
Article