On December 8th, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt branded Japan as an infamous enemy, a target that must and would be defeated. In February of 1942, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, initiating internment camps in America. Thousands of people with Japanese ancestry were rounded up and unceremoniously forced into sites across the country. Whole families lives were uprooted for what the government called “military necessity”. Sixty-two percent of those imprisoned were citizens of the United States. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of FDR’s actions. However, by January of 1945, the acts of exclusion were annulled, and the Japanese slowly began to return to their normal lives. Only by 1980 did the United States government begin
Executive Order 9066 (Feb. 19, 1942) Due to World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave permission to the confinement of “tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and residents from Japan.” This executive order gave the military the power to “ban any citizen from a 50-60 mile wide coastal area from Washington State to California.” This order also gave the military permission to transport these citizens to centers that they ran in California, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.
Did the U.S. government and President Franklin D. Roosevelt make the right decision when they signed Executive Order 9066? In December of 1941, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japan. In response to that attack, Executive Order 9066 put 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. Farewell to Manzanar, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, shares the story of Jeannie Wakatsuki and how her life was changed in an internment camp in California.
In They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, President Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrates irrationality fueled by anger with his decision to sign the Executive Order 9066. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, President Roosevelt was infuriated and urged Congress to declare war on Japan. Subsequently, on February 19, 1942, he issued Executive Order 9066 which “authorized the military to declare areas ‘from which any or all persons may be excluded’” (Takei 22). Consequently, Japanese-Americans were unjustly incarcerated in relocation camps.
Beginning with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the effects of World War II on Japanese-Americans (albeit, not limited to Japanese-Americans) in the United States motivated further racial divisions between the “foreign” and the “true American.” Probably the most significant sign of changing social and racial relationships between Japanese-Americans and Caucasian Americans was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signature of Executive Order 9066. This policy made legal the forced removal of Japanese-Americans, forcing them to relocate to Internment Camps, while abandoning their homes, businesses, and sometimes even families. Some “resident enemy aliens” were detained and transferred to Justice Camps for questioning as suspects of sabotage and espionage, as depicted by the character of the father in Julie Otsuka’s, When the Emperor was Divine.
Roosevelt, one our our prior presidents did this cruel act to our Japanese people. This act doesn’t justify him in any way. This act made our internees lose their homes, lands and business. They lost hope. Just like this is going on now with our former president.
There has been a domino effect of racist events against Japanese-Americans, including having to face bigotry, people (white Americans) that have an irrational fear of people descending from another country (Japanese-Americans), and racism since President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 . Bigotry, xenophobia, and racism impair the Japanese-American community. Not only did the forced evacuation of Japanese people in Hawaii and on the West Coast lead to unconstitutional imprisonment of 120,000 people, two thirds of whom were US-born citizens, but it also represented a failure of the country’s democracy by denying American citizens their rights granted by the U.S. Constitution . Because the Japanese-Americans were born in the United States, their U.S. citizenship was their birthright and was supposed to protect them; however, this was not the case and the loss of their property, unjust detainment because of a “national security risk”, and loss of their citizen status humiliated the American born citizens of Japanese immigrants. The US government purposely violated the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution and although since WWII the Japanese-Americans have been apologized to and the U.S. has admitted it was a mistake to detain these citizens, debate over the legitimacy of the 14th amendment now exists .
In this paper, I will discuss the signing of Executive Order 9066, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, regarding the Japanese relocation and connecting back to the Pearl Harbor attack, thus, resulting in further negative opinions of both the first generation Japanese and the second generation of Japanese Americans. Event Description: Internment was brought about by a justifiable fear for the security of the nation. Japan had figured out how to pull off the assault on Pearl Harbor, which nobody had thought was conceivable. The possibility that they may assault the West Coast while the US military was still in shock was on everyone’s mind. Secondly, it was caused by racism.
On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii causing the United States to enter World War II. Soon after, President D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 approving the removal of any and all civilians from “military areas” to prevent any acts of espionage from being committed. Over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds being American born citizens, living in the West coast were forcibly sent to internment camps. The U.S. government released a film discussing how the relocation was accomplished. However, the video blatantly disregards the true personal effects and conditions of the Japanese-American WWII relocation.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a decision that would change the lives of Japanese-Americans on February 19, 1942, two months following the Japanese bombings on Pearl Harbor. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of over 110,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident immigrants from Japan1. Meaning that Japanese-Americans, regardless of their U.S. citizenship, were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses and then proceed to move to remote war relocation and internment camps run by the U.S. Government. The attack on Pearl Harbor had, unfortunately, released a wave of negativity, aggression and blatant racism that some of the Non-Japanese American citizens had been holding in up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
In World War II under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt a document was signed that changed the lives of more than 120,000 people. This document was Executive Order 9066 which disclosed the orders of evacuating all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast (Lecture 12/1). This decision came to realization two months after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 1941. This event sparked paranoia with the President and the American people, because there were Japanese people living within the U.S. and they feared that the Japanese population would invaded America thinking that they were loyal to Japan. Due to the concern of the public, President Roosevelt was pressured to sign Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 (Lecture
Jayna Marie Lorenzo May 23, 2023 Historiography Paper Professor Kevin Murphy Historiography Final: Japanese Internment “A date which will live in infamy,” announced President Roosevelt during a press conference after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Due to the military threat by the Japanese on the West Coast, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering for the incarceration of all people of Japanese descent. The Order forced about 120,000 Japanese Americans into relocation centers across the United States where they remained in captivity until the war ended.
Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive order of 9066 on February 19, 1942, which had forced all of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to evacuate the Internment camps. The order was abrupt causeing Many Japanese to be forced to sell their property and land at a severe loss before departure because no one would be able to take care of the property or land. The Japanese had just the clothese on their back and whatever they had in their pocket, as the effect was instantaneous and the Japanese were not prepared for this Act. The order had not applied to Japaanese/Japnese-Americans in Hawaii because many of the workforce (i.e farmers) were not effected by this order as the Japanese were majority work force for the US. If those japanese were to be sent to the Internment camps, then US economy would take a hit in profits which the US desperately needed for World War II.
Constitution was violated. Life with liberty and property no longer applied to Japanese citizens. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order #9066, in 1942, as a way to reassure the American nation. This order gave the U.S. military power to relocate Japanese Americans on the grounds of a way to protect national security (Watts, 2020). Japanese Americans were given a few days to sell their valuables.
The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII was not justified. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans were scared of the Japanese Americans because they could sabotage the U.S. military. To try and solve the fear President Franklin D Roosevelt told the army in Executive order 9066 to relocate all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. They were relocated to detention centers in the desert. Many of them were in the detention centers for three years.
Today is February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066. Executive Order 9066 forces all Japanese-Americans regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to evacuate the west. In early 1942, the Roosevelt Administration was pressured to remove people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Roosevelt was pressured to do, this because he felt that some Japanese-Americans were plotting a sabotage against the US, following the bomb of Pearl Harbor.