THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DESTINED TO REPEAT IT.....It is with this familar saying that we turn our discussion of the immigration policy toward another immigrant group in the United States: The Japanese during World War II. We see that contemporary programs, as part of today's War on Terror, (such as the NSEERS "Special Registration" Program,) have similarities with the internment program of persons living in the U.S. of Japesnese ancestry, discussed in Chapter 4 of Ngai, was really the first program of its kind in the U.S. discriminating against immigrants during wartime.

"Japanese American Internment" as it was called, was the forced removal of approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans (62 percent of whom were United States citizens)from the U.S. West Coast during World War II. While approximately 10,000 were able to relocate to other parts of the country, the remainder – roughly 110,000 men, women and children – were sent to hastily constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers" in remote portions of the nation's interior. It is clearly one of the most shameful times in our nation's history.

Decades laster, On August 10, 1988 the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. On November 21, 1989, George H.W. Bush signed an appropriation bill authorizing payments to be paid out between 1990 and 1998 to survivors. In 1990, surviving internees began to receive individual redress payments and a letter of apology.