Fear concerning the Japanese Americans drove many to call for a complete evacuation of their race. In January of 1942 the Justice Department began reporting that much of the public favored a mass evacuation of the Japanese from the United States (Davenport,
2010). President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, giving Lieutenant General John DeWitt the power to order a mass exclusion (Murray, 2008). Even though the order did not exclusively state that the Japanese Americans were to be removed, this order gave Dewitt the power to remove any person from the West Coast that he deemed fit (Davenport, 2010). Orders concerning the evacuation and instructions on how to abide by the order were posted in communities of Japanese Americans (Japanese-American Internment, 2012). They were required to go through a registration process, come to their assigned locations, and bring only necessary belongings, which meant that all other belongings were to be given away or sold (Davenport, 2010). Initially the Japanese Americans were given a number and sent to assembly centers, such as stockyards, fairgrounds, or racetracks that had been converted for their arrival before their transport to an internment camp (Civil Rights: Japanese Americans, 2007). There were actually 2,500 that requested postwar deportation throughout the registration period, two-thirds of which were United States citizens (Robinson, 2010). Attorney General Francis Biddle pointed out that removal of the Japanese American citizens would be violating their constitutional rights, including habeas corpus, which meant they could not be held for more than a few days without being charged with a specific crime (Davenport, 2010). The Executive Order 9066 would result in the evacuation of 120,000 Japanese Americans (Ross, S. & Villanueva, R, 2007). Around a month after the Executive Order 9066 was signed, on March 18 1942, a new executive order was issued, which established the War Relocation Authority or WRA (Daniels, 1972). This agency was given the responsibility of handling the relocation centers and would take responsibility for helping Japanese Americans return to American life. |
Executive Order 9066
On February 19, 1942, America took it's first step towards the internment of the Japanese Americans.