All That's Interesting
From 1942 to 1946, thousands of innocent Japanese Americans were held in internment camps across the United States in an act dubbed a "military necessity" in World War II.
During World War II, the U.S. government forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — two-thirds of whom were American citizens — in internment camps across the interior West and Arkansas. This radical move came in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, as fear of sabotage and invasion fueled anti-Japanese sentiment that had already been brewing on the West Coast.
On Feb. 19, 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of people believed to be a threat to national security from the West Coast to various “r