The West Coast Under Pressure — Roosevelt and EO 9066
Franklin D. Roosevelt leads a nation in shock: 10 weeks after Pearl Harbor, fear of invasion grips the West Coast. General **John DeWitt**, commander of the Western Defense Command, insists that every person of Japanese ancestry poses a **sabotage** or espionage risk and demands mass evacuation. Governors, congressmen, and a frenzied press amplify the call. Roughly 120,000 people of Japanese descent live along those shores — two-thirds of them American-born citizens, the *Nisei* — but the legal distinction between citizens and aliens has all but collapsed in the political clamour.
Behind the scenes, the picture is more complicated. J. Edgar Hoover argues that his FBI has already detained the genuinely dangerous individuals; several legal advisers raise constitutional doubts about a mass removal based solely on ancestry. Secretary of War Henry Stimson hesitates, noting that such a measure would be 'repugnant to the principles' of the country.
Roosevelt must choose among competing imperatives: sign **Executive Order 9066**, which would authorize the forced exclusion and internment of tens of thousands of civilians — citizens and non-citizens alike — without charge or trial; reject the order and limit action to targeted arrests of confirmed suspects only; or confine himself to a strict curfew and mandatory registration of enemy nationals. Three logics collide: collective fear, constitutional law, and political pressure.
Washington, 19 February 1942, President of the United States: how to respond to the pressure to remove Americans of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast?
Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942. Within months, some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — two-thirds of them American citizens — were forced from their homes and held in camps run by the *War Relocation Authority* until 1945. The Supreme Court upheld the order in 1944 (*Korematsu v. United States*), a ruling later acknowledged as gravely mistaken. In 1988, the **Civil Liberties Act** delivered a formal apology from the U.S. government and a $20,000 payment to each surviving internee.
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