Governor Proclaims Day of Remembrance in California

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown on Feb. 16 issued his annual (and final) declaration of Feb. 19 as Day of Remembrance in California:

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On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set in motion the forced evacuation and incarceration of many thousands of loyal United States citizens solely by reason of their Japanese ancestry.

That thousands of Japanese American citizens were wrongfully interned in American concentration camps without charge and without a fair hearing continues to trouble the conscience of this nation. The internment of Japanese Americans should serve as a powerful reminder that in defending this nation and its ideals, we must do so as faithfully in the courtrooms and the public squares of this country as upon the battlefields.

In spite of the terrible ordeal of internment, Japanese Americans remained steadfastly loyal to the United States throughout World War II. Even as thousands lost their homes and their economic livelihoods, many thousands of young Japanese American men bravely took up arms and sacrificed their lives to defend this country. Although the national government’s fidelity to the ideals upon which it was founded lapsed during the war, the unshakeable faith of Japanese Americans in those same ideals did not.

On Feb. 19, I ask that all Californians join me in solemn remembrance of the issuance of Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. I similarly ask that all Californians commemorate the rescission of Executive Order 9066 by President Gerald R. Ford on Feb. 19, 1976.

Now, therefore, I, Edmund G. Brown Jr., governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim Feb. 19, 2018 as “A Day of Remembrance: Japanese American Evacuation.”