Executive Order 9066 Authorizes Japanese American Internment

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War and military commanders to designate “military areas” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” Though the order never mentions Japanese Americans by name, its application becomes clear within weeks as the War Relocation Authority begins the forced removal of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom are American citizens, from the West Coast to inland concentration camps.

The order follows intense lobbying by agricultural interests and the Western Growers Protective Association, who had long sought to eliminate Japanese American farmers as economic competitors. General John L. DeWitt, commanding the Western Defense Command, provides military rationale despite lacking evidence of any sabotage or espionage by Japanese Americans. DeWitt infamously declares: “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element… It makes no difference whether the citizen is loyal or not.”

The forced removal requires Japanese Americans to abandon homes, businesses, and property within days. Vulture buyers purchase farms and businesses at pennies on the dollar. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco later estimates Japanese Americans lose property worth approximately $400 million (equivalent to over $7 billion in 2024 dollars). Many internees lose everything they had spent generations building.

Conditions in the ten War Relocation Authority camps are harsh: families live in tar-paper barracks behind barbed wire, guarded by armed soldiers. The camps are located in remote, inhospitable areas including deserts in Arizona and California, and swamplands in Arkansas. Despite their imprisonment, over 33,000 Japanese Americans serve in the U.S. military during the war, including the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Executive Order 9066 establishes a dangerous precedent for executive detention without due process based on race and national origin. The order remains in effect until 1976. In 1988, President Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act formally apologizing and providing $20,000 in reparations to surviving internees, though this amount is a fraction of actual losses suffered.