Japanese Internment

The decision to imprison Japanese Americans was a popular one in 1942. It was supported not only by the government, but it was also called for by the press and the people. In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, Japan was the enemy. Many Americans believed that people of Japanese Ancestry were potential spies and saboteurs, intent on helping their mother country to win World War II. “The Japanese race is an enemy race,” General John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command wrote in February 1942. “And while many second and third generation Japanese born in the United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted” (quoted in Smith, 1995: 83).

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066. The Order declared that “the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense material, national defense premises, and national defense utilities.” In pursuit of this goal, the Secretary of War, or the military commander whom he might designate, was authorized “to prescribe military areas in such places