California will apologize to Japanese Americans for internment camps

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

California is set to apologize to Japanese Americans for its role in forced internment during World War II.

After the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, the majority being American citizens, were rounded up and relocated to internment camps.

Then President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing the U.S. army to forcibly remove Japanese people from their homes.

There were ten internment camps in all, four of them in California.

In 1988, the federal government issued a formal apology and approved reparations of $20,000 for every person held.

California's resolution focuses on the state's role and apologizes for the "unjust exclusion, removal, and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and for its failure to support and defend the civil rights and civil liberties of Japanese Americans during this period."

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the resolution Thursday.

Albert Muratsuchi, the California state assembly member who introduced the resolution, says he did so in part to draw attention to the plight of today's immigrants.