Internment of Japanese Americans

During World War II, about 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in ten concentration camps in the United States, operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country. About two-thirds were U.S. citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. About 127,000 Japanese Americans then lived in the continental U.S., of which about 112,000 lived on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei ('second generation'; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei ('third generation', the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ('first generation') immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship. In Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised more than one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated. Internment was intended to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose. Military authorities justified exclusion by claiming that an "unascertained number" of potentially disloyal Japanese Americans remained on the West Coast and that immediate separation between loyal and disloyal was impracticable. Military necessity was interpreted broadly to include not only direct defense concerns, but also civilian morale and broader wartime considerations. The implementation of int