California lawmakers on Thursday voted unanimously to formally apologize for the role the state legislature played in the incarceration of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent in internment camps during the second world war.

The mandatory relocation, which came on the heels of the Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor, forced hundreds of thousands – 70% of whom were American citizens – to leave behind their homes, belongings and communities.

This week’s vote comes 78 years after President Franklin D Roosevelt signed an executive order that gave the US army authority to remove Japanese civilians in the US from their homes following the Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor.

Albert Muratsuchi, the California state assembly member who introduced the resolution, said he wanted to lead by example and commemorate the anniversary in a bipartisan measure at a time when “our nation’s capital is hopelessly divided along party lines and President Trump is putting immigrant families and children in cages”.

An American soldier guards a Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, California. Photograph: FS/AP

Muratsuchi, who was born on a US military base in Okinawa, Japan, and whose district is home to one of the largest Japanese American communities in California, told KPCC that the bill was partly inspired by current events, including a Muslim travel ban and separation of families at the border.

“We’re seeing striking parallels between what happened to Japanese Americans before and during World War II and what we see happening today,” Muratsuchi said.

The assembly unanimously passed the resolution as several former internees and their families looked on. After the votes, lawmakers gathered at the entrance of the chamber to hug and shake hands with victims, including 96-year-old Kiyo Sato, who said young people needed to know about the period in history. “We need to remind them that this can’t happen again,” she said.

During Thursday’s state senate session, Richard Pan, a sponsor of the resolution, introduced two sons of the former California US representative Norman Yoshio Mineta. He was the first Asian American to serve in a presidential cabinet, under Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

Mineta was imprisoned in a camp but went on to become one of the most influential Asian Americans in the history of our nation, Pan said, noting that he led the congressional effort for a federal apology and reparations.

In 1983, a US congressional commission acknowledged the incarceration and injustices were a result of “racial prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership”.

Five years later, as part of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the federal government formally apologized for past injustices and paid $20,000 to survivors to redress them.

This week’s resolution doesn’t call for additional compensation but instead focuses on, and condemns, the California state legislature’s support for the internment camps seven decades ago. California was home to two camps, one in central California and another near the Oregon state line.

David Inoue, the executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, said in an interview that the measure was long overdue.

A photo of a Japanese family at a California internment camp during an exhibition in Sacramento. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

“It’s very welcome, particularly to those who are survivors, that the state of California is recognizing its role in supporting the racism and demagoguery that led to the incarceration of innocent civilians,” Inoue said.

He added that the rhetoric being directed at the immigrant community was part of a long history in America of “going from hating one immigrant group to hating another immigrant group”.

“All the vitriol that’s been directed at other immigrant groups is felt by the Japanese American community, too. The reason that what happened to us happened to us is almost identical to the xenophobia and racism we’re seeing now,” Inoue said.

“This resolution means that people are standing up and saying this is wrong. Hopefully this won’t be seen as another time when people rolled over and let oppression and destruction of families continue.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting