Poster Ordering the Forced Removal of Japanese Americans from South Los Angeles, 1942

Western Defense Command

Broadside

[Japanese Internment][WWII] Framed original broadside issued April 24, 1942 by the Western Defense Command enforcing Executive Order 9066 by the compulsory removal of Japanese Americans from a designated district of Los Angeles. The broadside directs “all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien” to present themselves for relocation, initiating their forced transfer to government custody. This document dates to the first phase of the federal mass incarceration program that uprooted more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, approximately two-thirds of whom were United States citizens.

Civilian Exclusion Order No. 41 Large format broadside framed. Western Defense Command and Fourth Army. San Francisco: U.S. Army, April 24, 1942. The notice mandates that a “responsible member of each family, and each individual living alone” report to a designated Civil Control Station between April 25 and April 26, 1942, and warns that failure to comply would result in criminal penalties under Public Law No. 503 and possible immediate apprehension. The text specifies the geographic boundaries of the exclusion zone within Los Angeles and outlines the administrative procedure for removal, including reporting instructions and compliance requirements. The exceptionally fast pace of mass incarceration is especially evident here, as the poster issued April 24 commands representatives to report immediately over the following two days for instruction, and mandates all Japanese and Japanese-Americans be vacated from the area by May 1, the following week. During this period, immigrants and citizens alike were suddenly ripped from their homes, schools, and jobs, forced to say good-bye to neighbors, loved ones, and pets, and pack whatever belongings were permitted by the U.S. government for internment of an indeterminate length of time.

Posted publicly in affected neighborhoods across California, Oregon, and Washington, exclusion orders such as this were a key part of the first phase of Japanese American mass incarceration. They introduced military command into neighborhood-level enforcement and a suspension of civil liberties for the West Coast Japanese immigrant population. The order is dated less than five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the U.S. was rapidly expanding federal emergency powers on the home front parallel to increasing involvement in WWII abroad. Exhibiting some damage including folds, creases, pinholes and several small tears at edges with a some in the center, many have been repaired with acid-free archival tape en verso. No loss to paper. Overall good condition. A rare and historically significant artifact of wartime racial profiling and a sobering reminder of the fragility of constitutional protections during times of crisis.

Item #22272

Price: $2,750.00