Thursday, February 19, 1942. Commencement of Japanese Internment.

Today is remembered as a black mark on American history, and is now officially commemorated as the Japanese Internment Day of Remembrance.  It was the day in which President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, resulting in internment.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable."  This would lead to internment camps, including Heart Mountain near Cody.

 Map showing interment camps and other aspects of the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the Pacific Coast during World War Two.

The text of the order read:

Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area here in above authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

While the choice of Heart Mountain in Park County was not one that Wyoming asked for, the event would prove to be a bit of a black mark on Wyoming's history as well.  Governor Lester Hunt, who did not come into office until 1943, would be vociferous in his statements regarding the internees and the legislature would take at least one act in regard to them, that being voting to deny them the right to vote in the state's elections.

On the same day, Darwin, Australia was bombed by the Japanese, inflicting heavy losses on facilities at the town. Twelve ships were sunk in the harbor, making the raid somewhat comparable to Pearl Harbor.

Like the attack at Pearl Harbor, the raid came in two stages and was a surprise attack, albeit on a nation already at war.  The Japanese aircraft were air and land based.  More bombs were used in the attack than had been used in the Pearl Harbor raid.  Australian defenses were relatively light and incapable of dealing with the attack. The resulting chaos resulted in a breakdown of civil authority, with looting taking place even by Australian troops in the town.  Many people would leave the city never to return, or only to return many years later.

The raid was the largest to occur against mainland Australia during the war and was an unqualified success.  The goal was to remove Darwin as a base for the Australians to counteract Japanese forces in Indonesia.

The Vichy government commenced a lengthy trial in Riom with the aims of showing that the preceding Third Republic had been responsible for France's defeat at the hand of the Germans in 1940.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, the city staged If Day, a simulated German invasion.  The event was a huge success which boosted local bonds sales, which was the goal, enormously.

June 10, 1919. Meanwhile, in Texas. . . .

The "World's Wonder Oilfield", Burkburnett Texas.  June 10, 1919.

Burkburnett, Texas oilfield north-west extension from opposite Golden Cycle well.  June 10, 1919.

Oil exploration was going great guns in Texas, but guns were beginning to sound again just south of the border.

No peace had yet arrived with Germany, officially, and things were getting pretty tense in Juarez as residents began to flee the border town just south of El Paso.  And Mexican revolutionaries were reported as active elsewhere.

The huge strike in Winnipeg and the impending Telegraph strike were also on the front page.  In fact, the strike in Winnipeg had not been broken and the municipality had been forced to fire nearly the entire town's police force.

And the Boy Scouts were in town.

May 15, 1919 The Winnipeg General Strike, the Greco Turkish War commences.

A more localized strike in Winnepeg, Manitoba  that commenced a few days prior spread to being a complete working class strike on this day in 1919.  It would become one of the largest sustained labor strikes in Canadian history.

The world was slipping into an economic depression, one now largely forgotten, and surprisingly brief, but in the immediate politically tense post war situation, a serious event indeed.

Also serious, Greece landed troops in the Smyrna, on the Turkish coast.

Greek troops landing on Smyrna.

An intent to land had been declared the day prior and the action was supported by the Allies.

The city had a large Greek population as did many areas of Turkey at the time.  Like many of the European states prior to the end of World War Two, Turkey contained significant ethnic enclaves including Greek ones, reflecting that Turkey itself had once been a Greek speaking and culturally Greek domain.  It's primarily Greek status had ended with the fall of Constantinople to the invading Ottomans in 1453 but large Greek populations remained.

The Ottoman Empire itself had come to a near end with the Central Power defeat in World War One. The Allies were sympathetic to national claims in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire was being dismantled.  As part of that, Greek claims in Turkey were received sympathetically.

With in a few days, the Greek beachhead in Turkey would expand to the entire province that the city was in, a significant expansion of the operation.  

The landing is the practical starting date for the Greco Turkish War, a war that initially had strong Allied support and which supported extensive Greek claims in Turkey.  Indeed, the war effort was aided by the fact that other Allied powers, including Italy and the United Kingdom, occupied parts of Anatolia and Turkish islands off of the Turkish coast. The initial goals were to partition Anatolia leaving the domain of the Turks much smaller than is presently the case, and which would have not only left a very large portion of it under Greek control, but which would have also left substantial coastal island areas under Italian control, but also some areas under Armenian control and possibly even the creation of a Kurdish state.

In its greatly weakened state Turkey did poorly in the war at first and this vision of a diminished Turkey appeared likely to come into existence.  A treaty to that effect was drafted between the warring powers but neither Greece nor the Ottoman Empire ratified it.  The war would spark support of the young Turkish nationalist who displaced the Ottoman Empire, which fell prior to the war concluding.  The year after the war's full conclusion the Turkish parliament would abolish the caliphate, and the political regime that had come into existence in 1299 would end.

By that time, the Turks were on the advance in the war, which Turks regard as the Turkish War of Independence.  Rather than the treaty that had been negotiated but not ratified, the end result was much more favorable to Turkey which achieved its present borders.  As part of that treat, a massive population exchange was entered into in which Greece and Turkey exchanged their respective ethnic populations and approximately 1,000,000 Greeks whose homes had been in Anatolia left it.  The practical result was, therefore, that a Greek population that dated back to the Byzantine Empire was effectively nearly completely removed, although small Greek populations remain in Turkey to the present day.

In Philadelphia, a Military Police unit paraded, including its mounted officers.

May 1, 1919. A Red May Day

May 1, May Day, has long been associated with the far left as its the International Workers Holiday.  In 1919, with Communism on the rise everywhere, May 1 was notably Red everywhere.

The evening Casper newspaper  noting the riots in Cleveland as well as the anarchist bombing campaign.  This paper also discussed the acquisition of property with a future eye towards social services.  Costa Rica and Mexico were trying to get into the League of Nations, the paper also noted, but weren't admitted due to political instability.

In the United States, the Communist Party USA was founded, rapidly gaining membership (while always remaining a minor political party) in the wake of the decline of the Socialist Party in the United States, which had come under the eyes of the law for its opposition to World War One. 

The CPUSA would have its glory years, if they could be called that, in the 1920s and the 1930s, during which it not only was a serious, if minor, political party, but during which it was also an organ for espionage for the Soviet Union.  It never had more than 80,000 members at its peak.  It's role as an arm of the efforts of the NKVD were already known, if not fully appreciated, by some who tried to bring it to the government's attention by the 1930s, and indeed a precursor to what later became known as the McCarthy Hearings actually occurred in the late 1930s and focused on some of the same people who would be examined later, but it was not until the end of World War Two when the full horrors of Communism in Russia were revealed that the CPUSA really started to decline to the trivial, where it remains today.

In Cleveland riots occurred on this day, springing from a Socialist march that was supported by Communist and Anarchist.  The imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs was the spark that ignited that flame.  There were about two deaths as the result of the riot, and about forty injuries.

In Winnepeg construction workers went on strike.  It would soon expanded to be a general strike.

In Bavaria, German forces, supported by Freikorps, breached the Communist defenses in Munich bringing the Bavarian Soviet Republic to an end.

Cheyenne was having an air show on this day in 1919.

In the U.S. the news was also still breaking about the anarchist bombing campaign that had been started but detected.  The campaign would revive later.  It wasn't connected with any other radical group, although it likely had the appearance of that to the general public at the time.

All of this would contribute to making the summer of 1919 the "Red Summer", as it was termed by James Weldon Johnson.  It would also fuel an ongoing "Red Scare" that had commenced during World War One.  With the summer beginning the way that it was, that the scare would occur was pretty predictable.  And in fact, the far left of 1919 was not only radical, but seeing a fair amount of global success.  It's chances of success in the United States were frankly slim and always would be, but the combination of the news produced a predictable reaction.