Internment of Japanese Americans

The internment of Japanese Americans refers to the forced removal and confinement of approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 incarceration camps in desolate areas of California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas during World War II. The uprooting commenced after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's military attacked Pearl Harbor. The order allowed for the exclusion of anyone of Japanese descent, citizen or alien, from western areas of the United States. Although military necessity was cited as the justification for the mass removal of Japanese Americans, a later government commission investigation revealed no evidence of this need and attributed the internment to racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and the failure of political ...