February 19th

On this day in 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, permitting the relocation of Americans of Japanese descent and Japanese immigrants to internment camps throughout the West. The Executive Order was issued based upon the recommendations Western Defense Command sent to General Headquarters in Washington on December 19, 1941:

1. In view of the fact that the West Coast of the United States has now been designated and is functioning as an active Theater of Operations, it is recommended that action be initiated at the earliest practicable date to collect all alien subjects fourteen years of age and over, of enemy nations and remove them to the Zone of the Interior.

2. It is also recommended that these individuals be held under restraint after removal from the Theater of Operations in order to preclude their surreptitious return.

3. Records indicate that there are approximately 40,000 of such enemy aliens and it is believed that they constitute an immediate and potential menace to vital measures of defense.

To commemorate this date last year, TPR brought you film images of the events (click this link.)

On February 19, 1942, an editorial in the Santa Cruz Sentinel-News said:

Efficient prosecution of this war demands that we recognize certain facts which make every Japanese in our midst a potential threat to our security, regardless of how admirable he might have been in time of peace. It is a mistake to think that we can clear up the dangers by process of elimination; that is, by depending entirely upon the FBI to ferret out all the treacherous acts and incriminating documents among the 100,000 Japanese living in areas where they could be of greatest service to an invading horde.

Take a look back at TPR’s February 19, 2007 article on the subject, here.