Executive Order 9066

Resulting in the Internment of Japanese Americans

Executive order

By: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Date: February 19, 1942

Source: Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Executive Order No. 9066." February 19, 1942.

About the Author: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was born in 1882 in New Hyde Park, New York. During his youth, he played sports and remained active, but at age thirty-nine, he contracted poliomyelitis (polio). The disease caused him to loose the full use of his legs, and throughout the rest of his life, he used a wheelchair and crutches for mobility. Upon his 1932 election to the presidency, he became the first United States President with a physical disability, which he took great steps to conceal. FDR led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II (1941–1945). He won the presidency for four consecutive terms—the only president to do so—and he died on April 12, 1945 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Franklin D. Roosevelt is also the fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president from 1901 to 1909.

INTRODUCTION

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack sank or disabled eighteen ships, killed more than 2,400 Americans, and almost crippled U.S. war-making capacity in the Pacific. Determined that the bombing of Pearl Harbor would not be followed by more sneak attacks, military and political leaders on the West Coast targeted persons of Japanese ancestry as potential saboteurs.

About 320,000 people of Japanese descent lived in the United States in 1941, with two-thirds of them residing in Hawaii. The Hawaiians largely escaped persecution because they were essential and valued members of society. On the mainland, Japanese Americans were a tiny minority. Although an official military survey concluded that Japanese Americans posed no danger, popular hostility fueled a campaign to round up all mainland Japanese Americans, a majority of whom were U.S. citizens. Many Americans simply did not accept that Asians could be loyal Americans.

On February 14, 1942, General John DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command, persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt to issue an executive order authorizing the removal of mainland Japanese Americans. Roosevelt issued the order on February 19. On March 21, 1942, Congress enacted the major provisions of 9066 into law and added stringent penalties for those who resisted relocation. As a result, 110,000 men, women, and children were forced to move to internment camps. Although relocated families could stay together, they had to leave their homes and jobs. Property owners suffered enormously because they had to dispose of their holdings in a matter of days and accept whatever price that they could get. Inside the camps, which were ringed with guard towers and fences topped with barbed-wire, the Japanese Americans had little to do. Most cooperated with government authorities.

A few Japanese Americans and their supporters resisted the internment order in the courts as a violation of fundamental constitutional rights. Fred Korematsu, an American citizen who was turned down because of ulcers when he volunteered for the army, refused to leave the war zone. In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the internment of the Japanese Americans on the grounds of "pressing public necessity" though it also declared that legal restrictions that limit the civil rights of a single group are immediately suspect as possible violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The Japanese American internment program officially ended on January 2, 1945 when the government released Japanese Americans from concentration camps and permitted them freedom of movement throughout the country.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area hereinabove authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

SIGNIFICANCE

The Japanese American internment program and the Supreme Court's approval of it have been generally condemned in the years since World War II. It is commonly agreed that the there was no military necessity for interning people of Japanese ancestry. Historian Peter Irons and other scholars have examined government documents to show how great a role racial stereotyping played in the internment decision. However, Milton Eisenhower, who briefly headed the War Relocation Authority that supervised the internment, has argued that military, political, economic, emotional, and racial forces combined to plunge American society off course.

Following the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, prejudice against Japanese Americans began to decrease. Starting in the 1970s, a drive began to secure government recognition of the wrong done to Japanese Americans during WWII. On February 19, 1976, President Gerald R. Ford issued a formal apology on behalf of the U.S. government in regard to the internment policy. In 1980, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was established to hear testimony, review wartime documents, and make a recommendation about reparations for the surviving evacuees. In 1983, the commission issued its report, Personal Justice Denied, in which it recommended that the United States acknowledge and apologize for the injustice of the internment, give presidential pardons to those who resisted internment, and establish a $1.5 billion fund to provide for redress. In 1988, Congress passed a bill that made these recommendations and President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Daniels, Roger, Sandra C. Taylor and Harry H.L. Kitano. Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Irons, Peter. Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Murray, Alice Yang. What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.