Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, was a controversial order signed by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, endearingly referred to by historians as FDR. Under the terms of this executive order, more than 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent were forcibly moved to internment camps located in the Western United States.
FDR, at the time a third-term president who had just guided the nation through the Great Depression, was faced with the first foreign attack on US soil since 1918 – the Japanese Empire’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Unexpected and unprovoked, the attack on December 7th 1941, “a date which will live in infamy”, was a huge success for the Japanese Empire, resulting in upwards of 3,500 Americans killed or wounded …show more content…
The order, stating that the Secretary of War and his Military Commanders should “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” (Exec. Order 9066, 1942). The order, worded specifically to be absent of any mention of race, was in fact designed to specifically target Japanese-Americans, vesting within the Secretary of War and his Commanders the power to decide where the military zones would be and who should be removed. This allowed the Secretary of War to specifically target people of Japanese heritage, even those of as little as one-sixteenth Japanese heritage, and remove them from their homes. Over 110,000 people with these traces of Japanese lineage were forced to leave the entire West Coast, except for within government internment camps. In an even more haunting excerpt from the executive order, the president writes that “the designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General… and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said proclamations” (Exec. Order 9066,
FDR, at the time a third-term president who had just guided the nation through the Great Depression, was faced with the first foreign attack on US soil since 1918 – the Japanese Empire’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Unexpected and unprovoked, the attack on December 7th 1941, “a date which will live in infamy”, was a huge success for the Japanese Empire, resulting in upwards of 3,500 Americans killed or wounded …show more content…
The order, stating that the Secretary of War and his Military Commanders should “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” (Exec. Order 9066, 1942). The order, worded specifically to be absent of any mention of race, was in fact designed to specifically target Japanese-Americans, vesting within the Secretary of War and his Commanders the power to decide where the military zones would be and who should be removed. This allowed the Secretary of War to specifically target people of Japanese heritage, even those of as little as one-sixteenth Japanese heritage, and remove them from their homes. Over 110,000 people with these traces of Japanese lineage were forced to leave the entire West Coast, except for within government internment camps. In an even more haunting excerpt from the executive order, the president writes that “the designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General… and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said proclamations” (Exec. Order 9066,