Disturbing History exists to sit with the parts of our past we’d rather avoid—the moments that force us to ask who we really are when fear takes over.In this episode, Brian walks through one of the darkest chapters in American history: the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. This wasn’t something that happened under a foreign dictatorship.
It happened here, carried out by our own government against its own people.In the spring of 1942, more than 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry were forced from their homes along the West Coast and imprisoned in camps scattered across some of the most remote and unforgiving parts of the country. Two-thirds of them were American citizens. They weren’t charged with crimes. They weren’t given trials.
Their only “crime” was their ancestry.Brian traces how this didn’t begin with Pearl Harbor. Anti-Asian racism had been building for decades—through the Chinese Exclusion Act, Alien Land Laws, Supreme Court rulings that barred citizenship, and immigration bans that made Japanese Americans perpetual outsiders. By the time Pearl Harbor happened, the groundwork for mass incarceration was already laid. The attack was just the excuse.
We follow the panic-filled weeks that came next: FBI raids in the middle of the night, media-fueled hysteria, and political maneuvering that led Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066. Military leaders openly argued that the absence of sabotage proved guilt. Fear replaced evidence.
Brian brings these places to life through survivor accounts: communal latrines with no privacy, schools behind barbed wire, armed guards watching children recite the Pledge of Allegiance.We also explore the damage that can’t be measured easily—the psychological toll on elders who lost everything, the identity fractures forced onto younger generations, and the loyalty questionnaire that tore families and communities apart. Resistance mattered too.
Brian profiles Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu, ordinary people who stood up to the government and paid the price, even as the Supreme Court failed them. The story doesn’t ignore the painful contradictions. Japanese American soldiers volunteered from behind barbed wire, forming the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history—fighting for freedoms their own families were denied. We follow the long, incomplete road to justice: decades of silence, inadequate compensation, the eventual exposure of government lies, and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which finally acknowledged what had been done.
But apologies didn’t erase the losses, the trauma, or the precedent.
Brian closes by looking at why this history still matters—how the same fears resurfaced after 9/11, how Korematsu remained standing law for decades, and how easily rights can be stripped away when fear is allowed to lead.
The people who made this happen weren’t monsters. They were neighbors, officials, soldiers, and citizens who failed to stop it.As the survivors grow fewer each year, remembering becomes a responsibility. Their stories aren’t just history—they’re a warning. Never again has to mean never again for anyone.
