Title: Japanese Mexican removal | Densho Encyclopedia
Headings: Japanese Mexican removal
Japanese Mexican removal
Contents
Background
After Pearl Harbor
Refugees and Internees
For More Information
Footnotes

Content: However, on January 5, 1942—with the approval, if not the direction, of Washington—the government ordered all residents of Japanese ancestry in Baja California to leave the state. Some 2,800 Mexican Japanese were forced to fill out "voluntary relocation applications" and move at least 200 miles from the coastal area and 100 miles from the US border. They were required to move at their own expense, and given only ten days to settle their affairs—only a few of their Mexican wives and mixed-race children were permitted to stay. Their homes and businesses were taken over by local Mexicans. Soon, more immigrants and their children, chased out of Sonora by government authorities, came to join them. ( Although two prominent Nisei merchants in the border community of Nogales, Luis Tanamichi and Ignacio Koba, obtained court injunctions preventing their removal, they were forcibly removed as a "protective measure" in November 1942). In early March the area around Manzanillo, in the state of Colima, was emptied of Japanese. In some areas, such Sinaloa and Chiapas, powerful local officials interceded on behalf of ethnic Japanese residents and forestalled their expulsion—there were rumors of bribes placed by local communities for such protection. Tomas Valles, state treasurer of Chihuahua, exiled 57 Japanese residents to his ranch, where they spent several months as forced laborers before being released. Refugees and Internees
By the end of 1942, some 5,000 ethnic Japanese were forcibly displaced.