Hear the voices and stories of Japanese American Incarceration from the real people who endured it.
Order 9066 is a landmark new podcast series that chronicles the Japanese American Incarceration during World War II. Through vivid, first-person accounts from those who lived through it, the series explores how this shocking violation of American democracy came to pass, and its legacy in the present.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 just months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forced from their homes and sent to one of ten "relocation centers," imprisoned behind barbed wire during the war. Two-thirds of them were American citizens.
Produced by American Public Media in collaboration with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the series launched on February 19 -- the anniversary of the executive order's signing.
Listen to the trailer:
Order 9066 will span eight episodes through July, and will culminate in three, hour-long national radio specials. Sab Shimono and Pat Suzuki -- veteran actors and stage performers who were both incarcerated at Tule Lake and the Amache camp in Colorado -- will narrate the episodes.
The series will cover the racist atmosphere of the time, the camps' makeshift living quarters and the extraordinary ways incarcerated people adapted; the fierce patriotism many Japanese Americans continued to feel, the 33,000 who served in uniform in the U.S. military, and the ways incarcerees were divided against each other as they were forced to answer questions of loyalty. It will also cover the movement for redress that eventually led to a formal apology from the U.S. government, and much more.
By hearing audio and first-person narratives from the Smithsonian archives, listeners will experience a nuanced account of this dark chapter in our country's past... and maybe even consider what your own actions might have been at the time.
Learn more about Order 9066 at APM Reports or subscribe directly on Apple Podcasts.
