February 19, 1942 — exactly 84 years ago today — President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, one of the most controversial domestic actions of World War II. Issued just ten weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the order authorized the U.S. military to designate “exclusion zones” on American soil and forcibly remove anyone deemed a threat to national security from those areas.
In practice, the order was directed almost entirely at Japanese Americans, the vast majority of whom were U.S. citizens or legal residents. Approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent were uprooted from their homes — primarily along the West Coast — and relocated to a network of ten internment camps in remote, desolate regions of the country, including Manzanar in California and Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Families were given little notice and allowed to bring only what they could carry, losing homes, businesses, and personal property in the process.
Fact-or-Fiction Daily News 
Leave a comment