L.A. County Board to vote on repealing support of WWII Japanese internment
By Michael Martinez, CNN
Los Angeles (CNN) - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote Wednesday on repealing a resolution made seven decades ago supporting the internment of Japanese Americans shortly after Japan's Pearl Harbor attacks, which led the United States to enter World War II.
"Seventy years ago, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted itself onto the wrong side of history," Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in a statement in which he announced he'll introduce the motion Wednesday to repeal the board's action.
The board voted unanimously to endorse President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 that put 120,000 Japanese Americans, about a third from Los Angeles County, in internment camps for up to three years, Ridley-Thomas said.
The board said it was difficult "if not impossible to distinguish between loyal and disloyal Japanese aliens."
Ridley-Thomas said his motion "will seek to address a historic wrong."
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