On This Day: FDR Approves Japanese-American Internment

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, many U.S. citizens seemed to become wary of Japanese-Americans. A report released in January 1942 accused Japanese-American citizens in Hawaii of helping Japan with the attack, although no documentation was provided to substantiate the claims.

In addition to propelling the United States into World War II, Pearl Harbor fed an already bitter cultural resentment of Japanese immigrants and the financial success many of them enjoyed in America. U.S. officials soon began to wonder whether they could legally remove the people from their homes during wartime.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisers sent him a memorandum that said the country should favor "national safety, not for the purpose of punishing those whose liberty may be temporarily affected by such action, but for the purpose of protecting the freedom of the nation, which may be long impaired, if not permanently lost, by nonaction."

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing the removal of Japanese-Americans to internment camps.

Alien or U.S. citizen, everyone of Japanese ancestry in Washington, Oregon and California was to be forcibly interned. More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were imprisoned. The last segregation center was not closed until 1946. After the detainees were released, President Harry S. Truman requested that Congress issue legislation to compensate those affected by Order 9066.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched an aerial attack on a U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing over 2,000 Americans.

Japan attempted to send out a last minute declaration of war to “avoid a charge of ‘attack without warning,’ but the plan cut the time element too fine,” writes the U.S. Army Center of Military History. U.S. forces had not received warning by the time the first wave of Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor soon before 8 a.m. A second wave followed an hour later.

Torpedoes and high-explosive and incendiary devices sank or damaged 21 vessels of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and destroyed 188 aircraft within two hours. U.S. casualties numbered in the thousands; some 1,177 American servicemen died on board the battleship Arizona, which for many became their final resting place and a continuing memorial.

The next day, in one of the most famous congressional addresses, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” The U.S. declared war on Japan just hours later, beginning its involvement in World War II.