• 100th Infantry Battalion: a U.S. Army battalion made up of nisei from Hawaii that saw heavy action during World War II. The 100th carved out an exemplary military record during their service in the European theater of operations. The 100th later became a battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.


• 442nd Regimental Combat Team: a segregated U.S. Army regiment made up of nisei that saw heavy action during World War II. The 442nd fought in Italy, France, and Germany. The 442nd rescued the "Lost Battalion" and was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. military history.


• Alien Enemy Hearing Boards: three-person civilian committees established by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review and make recommendations about the internment status of arrested Japanese immigrants (issei) considered "potentially dangerous." A total of ninety-three hearing boards were established in 1942. Internees were not allowed legal representation. After the hearings most issei were transferred to U.S. Army internment camps, and some were "released" to War Relocation Authority (WRA) incarceration camps.


• Assembly center: makeshift concentration camps providing temporary housing for about 92,000 people of Japanese ancestry uprooted under Executive Order 9066.


• Civil Liberties Act of 1988: the federal act (Public Law 100-383) that granted redress of $20,000 and a formal presidential apology to every surviving U.S. citizen or legal resident immigrant of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II.


• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): a program designed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 to relieve unemployment and combat environmental degradation. More than 500,000 men ages eighteen to twenty-five worked at CCC camps in state parks, forests, and other remote areas around the country until mid-1942.


• Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC): Congressional commission formed in 1980 to study the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and recommend an appropriate remedy.


• Concentration camp: a camp established by a government to confine prisoners.


• Coram nobis cases: legal term meaning "error before us" used to the reopen three Supreme Court cases: Korematsu v. United States, Hirabayashi v. United States, and Yasui v. United States. Coram nobis petitions were filed on behalf of Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Minoru Yasui claiming that a "fundamental error" had been committed when the government withheld important evidence in their cases during World War II. Coram nobis applies only in cases where a person has been convicted and served his sentence. All three wartime convictions were vacated or overturned soon thereafter.


• "Enemy alien": government classification for foreign nationals living in the U.S. whose country of birth is at war with the U.S.


• Executive Order 9066: this order, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorized the War Department to designate military areas from which "any and all persons may be excluded." This provided the basis for the mass exclusion and imprisonment of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.


• Fifth Column: a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy working covertly inside a nation to undermine its strength through espionage or sabotage; often used in reference to immigrants, who are assumed to have loyalties other than to the country in which they reside.


• Habeas corpus: a citizen's right to appear before a court as protection against unlawful detention or imprisonment; from the Latin meaning "you should have the body."


• Hakujin: "white person" in Japanese. This term is used to refer to a person of European descent.


• Incarceration: the state of being in prison or being confined.


• Issei: the first generation of immigrant Japanese Americans, most of whom came to the United States between 1885 and 1924. The issei were ineligible for U.S. citizenship until 1952.


• Japanese American: two-thirds of those imprisoned during World War II were nisei who had been born in the United States and thus were U.S. citizens. The proper term for them is "Japanese American" rather than "Japanese." Their immigrant parents, the issei, were forbidden by law from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens until 1952. While they were technically aliens, the issei had lived in the U.S. for decades by the time of World War II and raised their children in this country. Many of them considered themselves to be culturally Japanese, but were permanently settled in the U.S. Calling the issei "Japanese American" as opposed to "Japanese" is a way to recognize that fact.


• Kibei: U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry who were sent to Japan for formal education and socialization when young and later returned to the United States.


• "Loyalty questions": two questions on a mandatory questionnaire distributed to Japanese Americans in the incarceration camps. Despite serious problems with the wording and ambiguous meanings of the questions, government officials and others generally considered those who refused to answer or who answered "no" to the two questions to be "disloyal" to the United States.


• Military Intelligence Service (MIS): a branch of the U.S. Army in which many Japanese Americans (nisei and kibei) served during World War II, utilizing their language skills in the Pacific War. The soldiers of the MIS translated enemy documents, interrogated Japanese prisoners of war, intercepted enemy communications, and persuaded enemy units to surrender.


• Nikkei: Japanese emigrants and their descendants living outside (and sometimes inside) Japan.


• Nisei: U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry; second-generation Japanese Americans whose parents were Japanese immigrants (issei).


• No-Nos: colloquial term for those who answered "no" to questions 27 and 28, the so-called "loyalty questions" on the Application for Leave Clearance form (aka the loyalty questionnaire.)


• Redress and reparations: two terms describing compensation from the U.S. government for the wrongful exclusion and imprisonment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. While often used interchangeably, "redress" means to set right or remedy, as in correcting a social wrong, and can imply an apology. "Reparations" refers specifically to monetary compensation, as in payment of damages.


• Renunciants: U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry who renounced, or gave up, their U.S. citizenship during World War II. Renunciation of citizenship had little to do with "disloyalty" to the U.S., but instead was the result of a series of complex conditions and events that were beyond the control of those involved. After a legal battle, most renunciants had their citizenship restored in the 1960s.


• Sansei: term for third generation Japanese Americans, originating from the Japanese language term for "third generation."


• Segregation: when applied specifically to the history of Japanese Americans' wartime exclusion from the West Coast and incarceration is a term used to describe the process by which the War Relocation Authority (WRA) tried to separate "loyal" from "disloyal" Nikkei in response to critics who believed the unrest in the "War Relocation Authority" camps was being caused by a small number of "disloyal" agitators.


• Victory gardens: vegetable gardens planted by civilians all across the U.S. to ensure an adequate food supply for civilians and the troops after food rationing began in 1940.


• War Relocation Authority (WRA): the U.S. government agency that administered the incarceration camps in which Japanese Americans from the West Coast were imprisoned during World War II.

CITATION:

Key Terms & Definitions courtesy of the Sites of Shame and the Densho Encyclopedia.