Executive Order 9066

Image Source: A More Perfect Union

Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was issued to 110,000 Japanese that were American citizens and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty-to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The executive order was also given to some Italian and German citizens (Kashima).

About 3,200 resident aliens of Italian background were arrested and more than 300 of them were captive. About 11,000 German residents including some naturalized citizens were arrested and more than 5000 were captive (Kashima). They had to evacuate 93,000 Japanese people in California overnight and it materially disrupted agricultural production. The rushed evacuation would require thousands of troops tied up in transportation and raise very difficult questions of movement. Under the constitution 60,000 of those Japanese were American citizens (Kashima).