On this day in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the forced removal and mass internment of large swathes of people of Japanese descent as "enemy aliens." Executive Order 9066 mandated the incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, as part of the country's war effort two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The act was driven by concern over subterfuge or attack by those interned. German and Italian Americans were also incarcerated by the state, but at a much, much smaller scale. Japanese Americans across the entire West Coast were rounded up and put into camps, after the region was designated a zone of important military activity. That coast was, by far, much more susceptible to attack by Japan, drumming up much local distrust of the Japanese American population.
Those forced into the camps were allowed only what they could carry, and many were left with little to return to when they were released. Roosevelt, who we lionize today as a hero of the Second World War, was notably unconcerned about the constitutional rights of the Japanese Americans interred, according to contemporary sources.
Nobody checked the president's actions in that moment. The Supreme Court twice upheld the program, and Eleanor Roosevelt failed to sway her husband to reverse the decision. It took until 1976 for then-President Gerald Ford to prohibit any such policies from being reinstated. President Ronald Reagan officially apologized to those interred in 1988, and Congress approved reparations for them.
The National Archives has more information on the internment of Japanese Americans here.
