For my third Diary of Systemic Injustices, I wrote about a hashtag that I saw trending on Twitter that day that piqued my interest. It was “#executiveorder9066” and I thought this was just some random order that the opposing side of politics hated enough to get it trending on Twitter. However, looking deeper it revealed something much darker than I had previously thought. Executive order 9066 is the horrific order by President FDR to put Asian-Americans in internment camps as the United States joined the conflicts of WWII. This executive order is one of the ugliest reminders of the racism from this era against Asian-Americans, who were persecuted based on actions they had to part in. Internment camps is a subject that many Americans don’t get to hear about as it’s something we as a culture have tried to hide in our closet with our other demons. It was something that was protected by even the Supreme Court and wasn’t “fixed” until 1976 when President Gerald Ford made an order to prohibit this from happening again. Then there wasn’t a formal apology until 1988 when President Ronald Reagan issued a public apology on behalf of the government and gave reparations to those who were put into internment camps along with their children (History.com).
Japanese-Americans Interned at Santa Anita (Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Little did I know whenever I wrote about this trend, there would be a massive shooting against Asian-Americans that happened only a couple of weeks after. This horrific shooting is a terrifying reminder that the racism from years past is not completely gone and there are still those among us that are willing to kill a group of people based on preconceived notions about a race. This shooting killed 8 Asian-American women who all worked at a Spa, many of whom were single mothers. Erik Park, one of the sons of a victim, stated that his mom was “a single mother who dedicated her whole life to providing for my brother and me” (Feller). These killing have reignited the massive debate over gun control and have sparked discussion on the racism that still, unfortunately, exists in our country in 2021. It’s something that we have addressed in the past, but many argue that we haven’t done enough to combat racism and this may be proof that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.
Spa that recent shooting occurred at.
Works Cited
Congress, Library of. “Japanese-Americans Interned at Santa Anita.” Getty Images, www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/japanese-americans-interned-at-santa-anita-news-photo/640461557?adppopup=true.
Feller, Madison. “Biden and Harris Visiting Atlanta in Wake of Spa Shootings.” ELLE, ELLE, 19 Mar. 2021, www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a35862694/asian-women-killed-atlanta-massage-parlor-shootings/.
History.com Editors. “FDR Orders Japanese Americans into Internment Camps.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-signs-executive-order-9066.
Thank you for the great showcase! This helped me realize how bad the government has handled the treatment of Asian Americans, and how long it actually took them to apologize formally for what they did to them during the second World War. It really is terrible what happened a few weeks ago, and something must be done about it to prevent innocent people from being killed.
This was a great showcase! While I was aware of executive order 9066, I was not aware that the government took over 3 decades to apologize and over 40 years to offer some type of reparations. I believe this is a great and important highlight to the atrocities committed against Asian Americans in United States, and a reminder that we need to be the generation that ends this racist cycle of hatred.
Thank you for the informative post! I like how you looked back at the history of mistreatment towards Asian Americans, as this is an issue that has recently resurfaced but is not new. There is clearly a deeply rooted issue that needs to be addressed to a greater degree in order to stem change. This recent shooting was horrific, and there needs to be an abundance of resources put towards trying to stop any further tragedies similar to this one.