Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2003
Abstract
On February 19, 1942, approximately ten weeks after Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of all people of Japanese descent from vulnerable areas of the United States’ west coast. Meant as a security measure to protect the dams, power plants, harbors, railroads, and airports from spies who would attempt to compromise America’s vulnerable infrastructure, this order eventually led to the complete removal of all Japanese from Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington, relocating 120,000 people by mid-1942 (Only What xi-xii). Such actions were fueled as much by hysteria and fear concerning a possible invasion as they were by sixty years of racism that began in the 1880s with the first wave of Japanese immigration.
Recommended Citation
Holliday, Shawn. Lawson Fusado Inada. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 2003. Digital. Western Writers Series, 160.