Executive Order 9066

Main articles: Internment of Japanese Americans, Internment of German Americans, and Internment of Italian Americans
Sign posted notifying people of Japanese descent to report for incarceration
A girl detained in Arkansas walks to school in 1943.

Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. "This order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland—resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans."[1] Two-thirds of the 125,000 people displaced were U.S. citizens.[2]

Notably, far more Americans of Asian descent were forcibly interned than Americans of European descent, both in total and as a share of their relative populations. German and Italian Americans who were sent to internment camps during the war were sent under the provisions of Presidential Proclamation 2526 and the Alien Enemy Act, part of the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798.

  1. ^ "Executive Order 9066: Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration (1942)". National Archives. September 22, 2021. Archived from the original on February 3, 2023. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
  2. ^ "The Return of Japanese Americans to the West Coast in 1945". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. March 26, 2021. Retrieved April 15, 2024.