"On Feb. 19, 1942, in a time of war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an infamous decree � Executive Order 9066 � setting in motion the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Largely ignored have been the devastating consequences of America's wartime policies for another group of United States citizens. Shaped by racial prejudice, government directives also set the stage in 1942 for the forcible removal and confinement of 881 Aleut Americans � citizens all.

The Aleuts' ordeal, one of the least known but more disturbing chapters in U.S. civil-rights history, is worth remembering today as an admonitory tale in this post-9-11 era of "preemptive war" and "enemy combatants.""

Get the Story:
Tetsuden Kashima and Marla Williams: WW II and the Aleuts: an American tragedy (The Seattle Times 2/19)