What happened
On 19 February 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing military areas from which people could be excluded. Its implementation led to the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.
The order’s text speaks of exclusion from military areas. It authorizes the Secretary of War and the military commanders he designates to prescribe military areas from which any or all persons may be excluded, and subjects anyone’s right to enter, remain in or leave them to whatever restrictions the commander imposes. Its stated ground is protection against espionage and sabotage to national-defense material, premises and utilities.
How we know it
The order’s text does not name an ethnic group. The National Archives places it beside the policies and actions that followed, showing why formal wording and actual application must be examined together.
The Archives records how the general wording was applied. Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command announced curfews that included only Japanese Americans. He first encouraged voluntary evacuation, and about seven percent of the Japanese American population in the affected areas complied. On 29 March 1942 he issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began forced evacuation on 48 hours’ notice. A few days earlier, on 21 March, Congress had passed Public Law 503, making violation of the order a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Why it went that way
Wartime fears operated alongside longstanding anti-Asian racism and pressure from western interests. Invoking security did not establish that the people removed had individually committed wrongdoing.
The Archives says lobbyists from western states, many representing competing economic interests or nativist groups, pressed Congress and the President to remove people of Japanese descent from the West Coast, citizens and immigrants alike. It reports that Justice Department representatives raised constitutional and ethical objections in committee hearings, so the Army carried out the task.
What is still contested
Calling the camps relocation centers repeats an official euphemism. People were deprived of liberty, including American citizens; neutral administrative vocabulary can conceal the coercion involved.
According to the Archives, about 122,000 men, women and children were moved to assembly centers and then confined in isolated, fenced and guarded camps at ten sites in six western states and Arkansas. Nearly 70,000 of them were American citizens. The government made no charges against them, and they could not appeal their incarceration. Several Japanese Americans challenged the government’s actions in court, and the Supreme Court upheld their legality.
What it changed
The order enabled a system of exclusion and confinement. In 1988, federal legislation acknowledged the injustice, apologized and provided partial restitution to surviving eligible individuals.
The Archives estimates total property loss at $1.3 billion and net income loss at $2.7 billion, in 1983 dollars, based on a congressional commission’s investigation. The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948 provided token payments for some property losses. Public Law 100-383, in 1988, followed investigations by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person incarcerated.
Is it worth your time
Worth studying as a failure of rights under emergency authority. Compare the powers granted with the evidence used against those affected, and distinguish a government’s stated justification from a demonstrated necessity.
