Biden: Japanese American internment camps ‘one of the most shameful periods in American history’

President Biden on Sunday called the use of internment camps for Japanese Americans in the U.S. during World War II “one of the most shameful periods in American history.”

“When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, eighty-one years ago today, it ushered in one of the most shameful periods in American history,” Biden said in a statement marking the anniversary of Roosevelt’s executive order.

“The incarceration of Japanese Americans reminds us what happens when racism, fear and xenophobia go unchecked,” Biden added. “As we battle for the soul of our nation, we continue to combat the corrosive effects of hate on our democracy and the intergenerational trauma resulting from it.”

Around 120,000 Japanese Americans were held in internment camps during World War II, with Biden saying on Sunday that they “tore families apart.”

“The wrongful internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent tore families apart,” Biden said. “Men, women and children were forced to abandon their homes, their jobs, their communities, their businesses and their way of life. They were sent to inhumane concentration camps simply because of their heritage.”

In early 2022, Biden signed a bill that designated a former internment camp site in Colorado as a national historic site. The site, where more than 10,000 people were detained, now includes a cemetery, a monument and reconstructed structures from its time as an internment camp.