Executive Order 9066

Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidentialexecutive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. According to the National Archives and Records Administration, the order "authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security" from the West Coast to inland 'relocation centers'. It resulted in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans. Two-thirds of the 125,000 people displaced were U.S. citizens.

Far more Americans of Asian descent were forcibly interned than Americans of European descent, both in total and as a share of their relative populations. German and Italian Americans who were sent to internment camps during the war were sent under the provisions of the of 1798.