Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the secretary of war to designate military zones within the U.S. from which "any or all persons may be excluded." While the order was not targeted at any specific group, it became the basis for the mass relocation and internment of some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, including both U.S. citizens and non-citizens. In March 1942, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commander of the U.S. Army Western Defense Command, issued several public proclamations which established a massive exclusion zone along the west coast and demanded that all persons of Japanese ancestry report to civilian assembly centers. On short notice, thousands were forced to close businesses, abandon farms and homes, and move into remote internment camps, also called relocation centers. Some of the detainees were repatriated to Japan, some moved to other parts of the U.S. outside of the exclusion zones, and a number even enlisted with the U.S. Army, but most simply endured their internment in frustrated resignation. In January 1944, a Supreme Court ruling halted the detention of U.S. citizens without cause.Check more
