In February of 1942, just 10 weeks after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government issued Executive Order 9066, calling for the internment of Japanese Americans. Intended initially to prevent Japanese spies from receiving intel, this order authorized their removal from military areas “as deemed necessary or desirable” during World War II.
These areas covered much of the West Coast, where many Japanese-Americans resided, including California, Washington and Oregon. By June, more than 110,000 people would be forcibly removed from their homes and placed in prison camps scattered throughout the country.
Dorothea Lange/National Archives/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Under the order, anyone with 1/16th or more of Japanese heritage was required to be removed. At first, about 15,000 Japanese Americans willingly moved to the designated areas. By March 24, the U.S. Army began leading the removals, giving people just six days of notice to clear out with their belongings.
Many of the Relocation Centers were meant as temporary holding spaces, but some people waited many months before receiving permanent placement. These centers were in remote areas and reconfigured hastily to house the masses that were sent there. Food shortages and poor sanitation were common in these facilities.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 calling for the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The Mochida family, pictured here, were some of the 117,000 people that would be forced into prison camps scattered throughout the country by that June.
This Oakland, California grocery was owned by a Japanese-American and graduate of the University of California. The day after the Pearl Harbor attacks he put up his 'I Am An American' sign to prove his patriotism. Soon afterward, the government shut down the shop and forced the owner to a prison camp.
Accommodations for Japanese-Americans at the Santa Anita "reception center," Los Angeles County, California. April 1942.
The first group of 82 Japanese Americans arrive at the Manzanar "War Relocation Center" carrying their belongings in suitcases and bags, Owens Valley, California, in March 21, 1942. Manzanar was one of the first 10 prison camps opened in the United States, and its peak population, before it was closed in November 1945, was over 10,000 people.
Children of the Weill public school, from the so-called international settlement, are shown in a flag pledge ceremony in April of 1942. Those of Japanese ancestry were soon moved to War Relocation Authority centers.
A young Japanese American girl standing with her doll, waiting to travel with her parents to Owens Valley, during the forced removal of Japanese Americans under the U.S. Army war emergency order, in Los Angeles, California, April 1942.
The last Redondo Beach residents of Japanese ancestry were forcibly moved out by truck to relocation camps.
Crowds seen waiting for registration at Reception Centers in Santa Anita, California, April 1942.
Japanese Americans were incarcerated in crowded conditions at Santa Anita.
Risa and Yasubei Hirano pose with their son George (left) while holding a photograph of their other son, U.S. serviceman Shigera Hirano. The Hiranos were held at the Colorado River camp. Shigera served in the U.S. Army in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team while his family was incarcerated.
An American soldier guarding a crowd of Japanese American prisoners at an prisoner camp at Manzanar, California in 1944.
Japanese American prisoners at the Gila River Relocation Center greet First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Dillon S Myer, director of the War Relocation Authority, on a tour of inspection in Rivers, Arizona.
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The Relocation Centers housed Japanese Americans in barracks, with multiple families living together in communal areas. Each functioned as its own town with schools, a post office, and farmland, all monitored by guards and closed off to the outside world with barbed wire fences.
Jobs were offered to the prisoners during their times at these isolated camps, with a range as wide as their professions outside the camps had been. However, a policy was put in place that no person would receive wages higher than an Army private while there, no matter how critical or specialized their job was.
By December 1944, the Supreme Court put an end to Japanese internment camps with its ruling in Ex parte Mitsuye Endo. In this case, the court stated the War Relocation Authority "has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure."
The following month, Japanese American “evacuees” from the West Coast were finally allowed to return to their homes. The last camp did not close until March 1946.
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