Census Bureau and Japanese Internment-- Part 2: 120,000 Relocated

Information from the 1940 Census was secretly used in one of the worst violations of constitutional rights in U.S. history --  the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

In papers presented by historian Margo Anderson in 2000 and 2007, evidence was found that census officials cooperated with the government providing data to target Japanese-Americans.

The Japanese-American community has long suspected that the Census Bureau played a role  in banishment of 120,000 of heir people, mostly living along the West Coast to nearly a dozen internment camps following the bombing of Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941.

Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta was one of those people banished to internment camps. He was 11 and living in San Francisco when his family was sent to live in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

For decades, census officials had denied they had supplied information.

This was not a great day in American history, but in war all sorts of things happen.

--GreGen