Suitcase

Matsusaburo Hibi made this tiny suitcase in 1942 for his daughter Ibuki, so that she would have something of her own to carry when the family was being relocated from their home in the San Francisco Bay Area to Topaz, Utah.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, authorizing the military to circumvent constitutional rights of American citizens in the name of national defense, set in motion the internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, 50 percent of whom were children, and 70 percent of whom were U.S. citizens forced to leave their homes and jobs without due process of law.