The opening card of Japanese Relocation

Japanese Relocation is a 1943 film of the Office of War Information, Bureau of Motion Pictures. The opening card says it became "necessary to transfer several thousand Japanese residents from the Pacific Coast to points in the American Interior."

What the card said

FOLLOWING THE OUTBREAK OF THE PRESENT WAR, IT BECAME NECESSARY TO TRANSFER SEVERAL THOUSAND JAPANESE RESIDENTS FROM THE PACIFIC COAST TO POINTS IN THE AMERICAN INTERIOR.

The verb is the propaganda

"Necessary" and "transfer" are doing the work of an argument the card does not make. Necessary to whom, under what order, with what hearing? The card does not say. Executive Order 9066 did not name Japanese Americans. The posted instructions did, and they set a noon. By 1943 the Office of War Information was telling a movie audience that the move had been a transfer of "residents," a word that covers citizens and immigrants and decides nothing about consent.

The archive credits distribution under the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry. That is a theater circuit for a government film, not a camp roster. This page stops at the card. It does not summarize the film's later scenes, because those scenes are not the object in front of us. The short bridge is Japanese internment propaganda.