Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas ![]() | |
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Number | 9066 ![]() |
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President | Franklin D. Roosevelt ![]() |
Signed | February 19, 1942 ![]() |
Federal Register details | |
Federal Register document number | 42-1563 ![]() |
Publication date | February 25, 1942 ![]() |
Repealed by | |
Proclamation 4417, "Confirming the Termination of the Executive Order Authorizing Japanese-American Internment During World War II", February 19, 1976 |
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. "This order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland—resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans."[1] Two-thirds of the 125,000 people displaced were U.S. citizens.[2]
Notably, 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 Presidential Proclamation 2526 and the Alien Enemy Act, part of the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798.