"Evacuation" (Nope, not Saigon)

Ol' Remus

VERBATIM

1942, Arcadia California

Japanese Americans at the Santa Anita Park race track assembly area. They'll be transferred to internment camps in states far from the west coast. Note the barracks in the far distance, on the race track itself.

 

1942, Arcadia California

New arrivals at the Santa Anita Park assembly area.

 

Those who dismiss FEMA camps as paranoid ravings of tinfoil hat conspiracists would rather not dwell on the internment of 80,000 Japanese Americans and 30,000 Japanese non-citizens during the war years of the 1940s. Even the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover argued against mass imprisonment without due process, and dragged his feet in implementing it, but President Roosevelt thought it a splendid idea. FDR's intimates confided he took pleasure in the difficulties and subservience of common people. This order added pointless persecution to his guilty gratifications.

If we use occupied Europe as the measure, the internment itself was small scale and more disruptive than tragic—the Nazis could, and did, murder a larger number of inmates in one day . Japanese citizens could voluntarily move inland rather than be forcibly relocated, but it wasn't an attractive alternative in 1942 America. Nor was evasion of either option realistic, Japanese Americans had registered with the Census Bureau and non-citizens with the Alien Registration Act. As is routine for blatant violations of the Constitution, or even simple justice, the Supreme Court upheld FDR's Executive Order in 1944 with the usual creative misinterpretations and artful omissions, even 'though for Japanese citizens it plainly and illegally suspended due process and the Fifth Amendment. The Court has consistently held Constitutional guarantees are "valid unless needed". 

The Santa Anita assembly area was emptied in October 1943 and became an Army facility. The exclusion order was rescinded in January 1945 and the last internment camp closed in 1946, the inhabitants having been free to stay while making their arrangements. The Supreme Court has not yet closed. An oversight, doubtless.

In our time, and perhaps not coincidentally, the DHS has planned a 100 mile exclusion zone along the US borders and coastlines in their entirety. It's an area approaching a million square miles, which would require a security force at least as large and as well funded as the armed forces. The DHS couldn't make their intentions any more obvious than by acquiring twenty-seven hundred armored assault vehicles . In a crisis, anything within this zone can be requisitioned, including the inhabitants, or areas can be depopulated through forcible evacuation and "free fire zones" established. 

We're told a truly dire emergency is needed. Or an Executive Order. We're confident DC can arrange either one.