todaysdocument:

Executive Order 9066 dated February 19, 1942, in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt Authorizes the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas, 2/19/1942

File Unit: Executive Orders 9041 – 9070, 1/26/1942 – 2/24/1942. Series: Executive Orders, 1862 – 2011. Record Group 11: General Records of the United States Government, 1778 – 2006

Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt seventy-five years ago on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland. In the next 6 months, over 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry–over 60,000 of them American citizens–were moved to assembly centers. They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded relocation centers, known as internment camps.

The U.S. Government would eventually be compelled to compensate surviving internees for their treatment in 1988.

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Explore more resources from @usnatarchives​ on Japanese American Internment and Executive Order 9066:

• The National Archives commemorates the 75th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066
• Correcting the Record on Dorothea Lange’s Japanese Internment Photos
• Japanese Internment: Righting a Wrong
• Fractured Ideals: Japanese American Internment through a Government Lens
• New Special Exhibit at the @fdrlibrary: IMAGES OF INTERNMENT: THE INCARCERATION OF JAPANESE AMERICANS DURING WORLD WAR II
• Browse nearly 4,000 photos of Japanese American relocation and internment in  the Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority in the @usnatarchives online Catalog