On Thursday, February 19, 1942, two and a half months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing military commanders to designate military areas for relocation of Japanese Americans. This forced 120,000 Japanese Americans into “relocation camps,” based on the fear that Japan was preparing a full-scale attack on the west coast and that some in the U.S. Japanese community might be spies for the Japanese government.
Executive Order 9066
