How did the Japanese Americans come to obtain redress for wartime incarceration?
The first calls for redress came out of the Japanese American Citizens’ League in the 1970s, but the movement made very little progress until the early 1980s. In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which gave the Japanese American community a chance to unite in the redress movement and call the nation’s attention to the wrongs suffered under mass incarceration. Soon after the Commission published its findings and recommendations, the major wartime cases giving judicial approval of the incarceration were overturned. In 1987, redress bills were introduced in the House and Senate and won approval in both houses. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act into law on August 10, 1988 and on October 9, 1990, the Justice Department delivered the first redress payments to the oldest living survivors of the incarceration. A total of 82,219 individuals received payments before the Justice Department’s Office of Redress Administ
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