Drafted just three months after Pearl Harbor, the official language of Executive Order No. 9066 seemed, initially at least, to indicate little cause for alarm.
In it, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave authority to designated military commanders to "prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate military commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restriction the secretary of war or the appropriate military commander may impose in his discretion."
Furthermore, Roosevelt ordered, "The secretary of war is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom such transportation, food, shelter and accommodations as may be necessary ..."
But the application of the order would have a devastating consequences for Japanese-Americans suddenly deemed to have "foreign enemy ancestry."
Executive Order 9066 established the authority needed to enact the 1942 Civilian Exclusion Order No. 346, under which 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals on the West Coast were removed from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps for the duration of World War II. A relatively small number of Italians and Germans also were interned.
In Hawai'i, the military government pragmatically decided against interning the territory's Japanese-American residents, who then were about a third of the territory's population.
Still, an estimated 1,400 people were detained or interned. Most were sent to a temporary camp at Sand Island and later moved to Honouliuli Internment Camp, an ominous facility with guard towers and barbed wire.
Smaller facilities also were set up on the Big Island, Maui and Kaua'i.
Nearly 700 resident aliens were sent to internment camps on the Mainland, many joined voluntarily by family members.
Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Gerald Ford in 1976. In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians issued the report "Personal Justice Denied," which concluded that the internment of Japanese-Americans was not justified by military necessity. Six years later, President George H.W. Bush authorized reparation payments to surviving internees.
