59 Years Ago in TIME

By Harriet Barovick, Ellin Martens, Janice Min, Sora Song, Heather Won Tesoriero and Deirdre Van Dyk

Concerns about the civil liberties of Arab Americans stem in part from drastic steps the government took during World War II, when Japanese Americans were forcibly moved to INTERNMENT CAMPS. In an issue with a cover story on Mexican Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla, TIME wrote of one of the first groups sent away.

Pasadena's Rose Bowl looked like a second-hand auto park. In the chill dawn, 140 battered cars and sagging trucks huddled, piled high with furniture, bundles, gardening tools. At 6:30 a.m. they chuffed and spluttered, wheeled into line, and started rolling. Led by a goggled policeman on a motorcycle, a jeep and three command cars full of newsmen, they headed for the dark, towering mountains to the east. Thus, last week, the first compulsory migration in U.S. history set out for Manzanar, in California's desolate Owens Valley. In the cavalcade were some 300 Japanese aliens and Nisei--U.S. citizens of Japanese blood...In the unfinished, tar-papered dormitories where they will live until the war ends, they made their beds on mattress ticking filled with straw...Some projects with which the Army may keep its guests busy: laying broad-gauge track on the railway down the valley; driving a highway across the Sierras...In San Francisco's Little Tokyo, store fronts were plastered with huge signs, proclaiming, "Evacuation Sale." In one window, under the sign, hung a red-white-&-blue poster: God bless America, the land we love. --TIME, April 6, 1942