Executive Order 9066 — Japanese American Internment
February 19, 1942 · 20th Century
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced relocation and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Two-thirds were American citizens. Justified as a military necessity after Pearl Harbor, the order had no basis in evidence of disloyalty. Entire families were forced to abandon homes and businesses and confined in remote camps for up to four years. The Supreme Court upheld the order in Korematsu v. United States in 1944, a ruling not formally repudiated until 2018.
Key Figures
Earl WarrenFranklin D. RooseveltFred Korematsu
Locations
Washington, D.C.San Francisco
Topics
civil rightsWorld War IIUSAracismimmigration enforcementinternmentJapanese Americans
Connected Events — 6 Connections
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Extended race-based exclusion logic of Chinese Exclusion Act Signed into Law
Operationalized exclusionary apparatus built by Immigration Act of 1924 Signed into Law
Pearl Harbor attack triggered anti-Japanese hysteria that Roosevelt cited as military justification for Executive Order 9066 two months later Pearl Harbor Attack
Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military was a direct institutional response to the wartime racial injustice exemplified by Roosevelt's EO 9066, which had interned 120,000 Japanese Americans based solely on ancestry while Black soldiers served in segregated units Executive Order 9981 — Military Desegregation
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