Essay On Executive Order 9056

How would any family feel if they were convicted out of their own home because they were suspected of espionage with no evidence? In 1943, the Japanese and Japanese-American experienced this very situation with the issuing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This act ordered the military to forcibly relocate approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-American living on the West Coast of the United States to internment camp. This act mostly applied to people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast, not so much for the Japanese living in Hawaii or Germans or Italians residing in America. Although Executive Order 9066 may have not been so popular later, at that moment, the president did what he had to for the

There were reasons behind President Roosevelt’s order on February 19th, 1942. After the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the American Navy’s Pacific fleet was incapacitated and the Pacific Coast was mostly defenseless against more attacks and raids. A few months later, a Japanese submarine emerged on the coast of California and bombarded the Elwood oil refinery; this led to mass fear and panic spreading among the civilians living in and outside the the affected area. People reached to the government to create military and defense bases for protection. In addition, the Roberts Commission Report in January 1942 further added to public fear and anti-Japanese resentment. The report stated that there was much espionage spreading in Hawaii even before the Pearl Harbor attack by Japanese agents and people living at Oahu. This proved to be false later on, but many rumors came out from that report. A popular one was of a Japanese-born (Issei) person and two Hawaii-born Japanese (Nissei) citizens of Niihau had employ violence against their neighbors to help an injured Japanese pilot. This caused massive resentment against the Japanese and fear that the West Coast might be in danger of a raid supported by

The relocation of Japanese into internment camps was necessary for national security and protection for the people, but it ignored the fact that many Japanese citizens and noncitizens alike had to leave much of their homes, valuables, and assets behind, lived in horrible conditions in the camps, isolated them from everyone, and disrupted their lives greatly. Simply, relocating 120,000 people to a different location was overboard. Military personnels at the defense bases and factories could easily restrain any people from approaching the bases and facilities. They could also tell the Japanese people or Asian race in general apart from the white Americans since anybody of Japanese ancestry was easily recognizable. Moreover, every citizen was already told advised to report any suspicious persons or activities to the government for investigation after the incident at Pearl Harbor. Leaving the Japanese people under extra military and the citizens’ supervision or have them quarantined in their homes would have been enough. At the very least, they would still have their homes, farms, and valuables after the war was over. That is demonstrating personal responsibility as well because it considers both sides of the story. As president, this solution was have sufficed enough for two or so years that could settle