Seventy-five years ago, President Truman's administration finally closed the last of the "War Relocation Centers" and ended the incarceration of Japanese Americans that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor. While a series of legislative victories followed in the immediate postwar years, a decades-long Redress Movement led to passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and ultimately a formal apology and reparations for what these families endured.

During World War II, Sylvia Mendez and her family began a court battle that would culminate in ending legal segregation in California. This landmark case would later be used to help justify the "separate is unequal" ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which ultimately overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that made "separate but equal" the law of the land.

In 1946, two Black WWII veterans were victims of heinous hate crimes just two weeks apart. It took public outcry from well-known figures like Orson Welles and Langston Hughes, but President Truman finally began to address the racial injustices and violence being committed across the nation, ultimately culminating in the desegregation of the military in 1948.

Travel to The National WWII Museum in New Orleans to explore, remember, and reflect on World War II through exclusive access to the Museum’s campus.

28 Japanese officials are tried for war crimes, with one glaring omission: Emperor Hirohito. General MacArthur's reasoning behind the exclusion was solid enough--but not without criticism.