Japanese American Internment was the relocation and internment
by the United States government in 1942 of about 110,000
Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific
coast of the United States to camps called “War Relocation
Camps,” in the wake of Imperial Japan‘s attack on Pearl Harbor.
The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally
throughout the United States. All who lived on the West Coast of
the United States were interned, while in Hawaii, where the
150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the
population, an estimated 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. Of those
interned, 62% were American citizens. Executive Order 9066,
issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military
commanders to designate “military areas” as “exclusion zones,”
from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This power was
used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were
excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of
California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona