On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 due to bad influence of other leaders. The American people were suspicious of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Executive Order 9066 forced 110,000-120,000 Japanese-Americans, even if citizens of the U.S, to leave their homes and go into internment camps. These internment camps were unconstitutional because it denied American citizens their basic rights.
The internment violated many civil liberties, and it has been called the most flagrant violation of rights in U.S. history. The order was made under the pretense of national security. The order was to prevent Japanese from spying, and it was supposed to protect the Japanese-Americans from harm. Many politicians knew that it was unconstitutional,
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The U.S Army though if 1/3 of the Japanese Americans were aliens, and some were dangerous they came to the conclusion they were all dangerous and all Japanese Americans should be sent to internment camps. Robert Kashiwagi said “As far as I’m concerned, I was born here, and according to the Constitution that I studied in school, that I had the Bill of Rights that should have backed me up. And until that very minute I got on the evacuation train, I say, it can’t be. I say how can they do that to an American citizen?” Many Japanese-American saw the order in the newspaper. They only had a few days to get pack and sell their homes. They were allowed only one suitcase per person. There were ten internment camps throughout the United States that they were sent to. The camps were in desert areas that nobody else wanted to live in, but at a camp called Camp Harmony, it was cover with mud. “We sank ankle deep in to the gray, glutinous mud.” At the time they did not know how long they would be locked up, but in the end they were in the camps for four