The Census Helped Put Japanese-Americans In Concentration Camps

Posted on: Thu, 02/20/2020 - 00:35 By: Tom Swiss
Japanese internment instructions from WWII

February 19th is the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, FDR's order to put Japanese Americans into concentration camps. At this time when anti-immigrant sentiment is rising and we are preparing for the US Census, it is worth pausing to remember how census information was used in this state kidnapping of our fellow Americans, to consider how it could be so used again, and to resolve to answer the census only with a count of people and not with any further information, in accordance with the Constitution's provision for an "enumeration", not an interrogation.

Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II (Scientific American)

Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the Census Bureau released block-by-block data during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. "We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence that they had also provided microdata for surveillance," Anderson says.