Long title | AN ACT To amend the Trading with the Enemy Act, as amended; to create a commission to make an inquiry and report with respect to war claims; and to provide for relief for internees in certain cases |
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Enacted by | the 80th United States Congress |
Effective | July 3, 1948 |
Citations | |
Public law | Pub. L. 80–896 |
Statutes at Large | 62 Stat. 1240 |
Legislative history | |
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The War Claims Act of 1948, or Public Law 80-896 (62 Stat. 1240; 50 U.S.C.), is a United States federal law passed by the 80th United States Congress on July 3, 1948.
It created the War Claims Commission to adjudicate claims and pay out compensation to American prisoners of war and civilian internees of World War II. It authorized ten prisoner of war and civilian internee compensation programs, and four war damage and loss compensation programs. Payments and administrative expenses for all but three of the programs were paid by the liquidation of Japanese and German assets seized by the U.S. after World War II. [1] Payments to prisoners of war were at the rate of US$1 to $2.50 per day of imprisonment, payments to civilian internees of Japan amounted to $60 for each month of internment. Civilians were also eligible for compensation for disability or death. The act did not authorize compensation for civilian internees held by Germany.
The Act also added Section 39 to the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917, to the effect that no compensation should be paid for property confiscated after 17 December 1941. [2]
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. "This order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland—resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans." Two-thirds of the 125,000 people displaced were U.S. citizens.
During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the detainees were United States citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines, and Wake Island in December 1941. Before the war, about 127,000 Japanese Americans lived in the continental United States, of which about 112,000 lived on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei and Sansei. The rest were Issei immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship. In Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised more than one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated.
The Prisoner of War Medal is a military award of the United States Armed Forces which was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on 8 November 1985. The United States Code citation for the POW Medal statute is 10 U.S.C. § 1128.
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war. War reparations can take the form of hard currency, precious metals, natural resources, industrial assets, or intellectual properties. Loss of territory in a peace settlement is usually considered to be distinct from war reparations.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 is a United States federal law that granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been wrongly interned by the United States government during World War II and to "discourage the occurrence of similar injustices and violations of civil liberties in the future". The act was sponsored by California Democratic congressman and former internee Norman Mineta in the House and Hawaii Democrat Senator Spark Matsunaga in the Senate. The bill was supported by the majority of Democrats in Congress, while the majority of Republicans voted against it. The act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed. Usually, the countries are in a state of declared war.
Amache National Historic Site, formally the Granada War Relocation Center but known to the internees as Camp Amache, was a concentration camp for Japanese Americans in Prowers County, Colorado. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Americans on the West Coast were rounded up and sent to remote camps. Among the inmates, the notation "亜町" was sometimes applied.
A civilian internee is a civilian detained by a party to a war for security reasons. Internees are usually forced to reside in internment camps. Historical examples include Japanese American internment and internment of German Americans in the United States during World War II. Japan interned 130,000 Dutch, British, and American civilians in Asia during World War II.
Camp Forrest, located in a wooded area east of the city of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was one of the U.S. Army's largest training bases during World War II. An active army post between 1941 and 1946, it was named after Civil War cavalry Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The Japanese-American Claims Act is a law passed by the United States Congress and signed by President Harry S. Truman on July 2, 1948. The law authorized the settlement of property loss claims by people of Japanese descent who were removed from the Pacific Coast area during World War II. According to a Senate report on the Act, there were concerns about whether the United States government had the right to evacuate and place all people of Japanese ancestry in internment camps. As result of being placed in the Japanese internment camps there was great loss of property, belongings, business, "and the principles of justice and responsible government require that there should be compensation for such losses. "Congress over time appropriated $38 million to settle 23,000 claims for damages totaling $131 million. The final claim was adjudicated in 1965."
The internment of Italian Americans refers to the US government's internment of Italian nationals during World War II. As was customary after Italy and the US were at war, they were classified as "enemy aliens" and some were detained by the Department of Justice under the Alien and Sedition Act. But in practice, the US applied detention only to Italian nationals, not to US citizens, or long-term US residents. Italian immigrants had been allowed to gain citizenship through the naturalization process during the years before the war, and by 1940 there were millions of US citizens who had been born in Italy.
The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States (FCSC) is a quasi-judicial, independent agency within the U.S. Department of Justice which adjudicates claims of U.S. nationals against foreign governments, either under specific jurisdiction conferred by Congress or pursuant to international claims settlement agreements. Funds for payment of the commission's awards are derived from congressional appropriations, international claims settlements, or liquidation of foreign assets in the United States by the Departments of Justice and the U.S. treasury.
Stanley Internment Camp was a civilian internment camp in Hong Kong during the Second World War. Located in Stanley, on the southern end of Hong Kong Island, it was used by the Japanese imperial forces to hold non-Chinese enemy nationals after their victory in the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941. About 2,800 men, women, and children were held at the non-segregated camp for 44 months from early January 1942 to August 1945 when Japanese forces surrendered. The camp area consisted of St Stephen's College and the grounds of Stanley Prison, excluding the prison itself.
On February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced removal of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast and into internment camps for the duration of the war. The personal rights, liberties, and freedoms of Japanese Americans were suspended by the United States government. In the "relocation centers", internees were housed in tar-papered army-style barracks. Some individuals who protested their treatment were sent to a special camp at Tule Lake, California.
Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I and World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.
The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. The Germans abducted approximately 12 million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds came from Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Many workers died as a result of their living conditions – extreme mistreatment, severe malnutrition and abuse were the main causes of death. Many more became civilian casualties from enemy (Allied) bombing and shelling of their workplaces throughout the war. At the peak of the program the forced labourers constituted 20% of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15 million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war.
The Defense Base Act (DBA) is an extension of the federal workers' compensation program that covers longshoremen and harbor workers, the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act 33 U.S.C. §§ 901–950. The DBA covers persons employed at United States defense bases overseas. The DBA is designed to provide medical treatment and compensation to employees of defense contractors injured in the scope and course of employment. The DBA is administered by the United States Department of Labor.
Crystal City Internment Camp, located near Crystal City, Texas, was a place of confinement for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II, and has been variously described as a detention facility or a concentration camp. The camp, which was originally designed to hold 3,500 people, opened in December 1943 and was officially closed on February 11, 1948.
The Rescission Act of 1946 is a law of the United States reducing (rescinding) the amounts of certain funds already designated for specific government programs, much of it for the U.S. military, after World War II concluded and as American military and public works spending diminished.