Executive Order 9066 & Jazz

Shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and during the Second World War, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the United States Presidential Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. It ordered all Japanese Americans to internment camps because many were assumed spies. By 1943, tens of thousands (approximately 120,000) Japanese Americans were held in internment camps and most of them were American-born citizens. They were forced to leave everything behind, including their homes, work, and belongings, and move to an excluded place. American’s anti-Japanese bias and extreme hysteria over rumors of Japanese attacks and espionage led to this hasty decision by the U.S. government. Although it violated the constitutional rights, U.S. put American-born Japanese Americans into internment camps without any question.


In the internment camps, Japanese Americans lived in harsh conditions including the “persistent stench of horse smells, the windowless stalls, and barbed wire fences.” Japanese Americans were simply punished for being “Japanese” and the psychological impact of being in captive because of their racial origin was appalling to all Japanese.

Living in over-crowded conditions, some Japanese Americans learned to make their own music, using whatever they had. In spite of chaos and psychological illness, Japanese American bands in internment camps continued playing and creating music because it distracted them from all the troubles and brought out pleasure. Using saxophones, trumpets, and other available instruments, they played jazz for dance nights, proms, graduations, and special ceremonies. Many were self-taught musicians and DJs who learned how to play music just to escape from despair and to unite fellow Japanese Americans. Music was something that gave them hope to survive and continue on. It was a way to express their identity as Americans. In order to prove how American they were, they sent their sons to fight for U.S. in wars and pledged allegiance to America.


Because Asian Americans were stereotyped as passive, reserved, quiet, and model minority, they were seen unfit with jazz, which is active, loud, creative, and emotional. However, they created the “Asian American Jazz” using Asian American contents in the lyrics, having political messages, and having Asian characteristics and sounds.

Executive Order 9066 was rescinded on February 19, 1976 by President Gerald Ford. Later, it was concluded that the imprisonment of Japanese Americans was based on “racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” The U.S. government paid $20,000 to each of the survivors and gave a public education fund to help ensure that this would never happen again. Japanese American Jazz continued to be popular and more people joined in to create songs, poetry, words, and music that told the story of Japanese American internment.

Insun Cheon.