Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 authorized the exclusion of more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent from the West Coast. It also cleared the way for their eventual incarceration in War Relocation Authority camps, where people were kept until the end of 1945.
In the weeks after 9066 was signed, families throughout Southern California — home to the biggest Japanese American population in the country — sold their belongings, packed what they could carry and reported to ominously named “assembly centers,” where they stayed until the internment camps were ready for occupation.
About two-thirds of the people sent to the camps were American citizens. Though Japanese Americans were, by far, the group most prominently targeted following 9066, the order also touched the lives of people of German and Italian descent. Several hundred German and Italian residents of Southern California were forced to move away from coastal areas.
Legal challenges to 9066 were unsuccessful during the war, but that didn’t end the debate. In 1981, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians found no evidence that any Japanese immigrant or American citizen of Japanese ancestry committed any act of espionage or sabotage on behalf of the Japanese empire. The commission concluded the relocation and incarceration that followed 9066 was unjust and based on racism, hysteria and a failure of political leadership. As a result, the government issued a formal apology to Japanese Americans and redress checks of $20,000 to more than 80,000 former camp inmates and their descendants.
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